Green Cities: Utopia or Reality? Evidence from Zurich, Switzerland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

This article focuses on a very important topic, which is the urban green infrastructure and its role in improving urban quality of life, trying to combine policy evaluation with the analysis of a case study. Although the approach is very interesting, it clearly fails in applying a clear methodology and most of the steps of the study are poorly explained and, consequently, so are the results and its implications.

English is generally correct, although some minor issues should be corrected.

Most of the graphical elements present a very poor quality and some of its elements were kept without translation to English.

Abstract

The abstract seems consistent with the contents of the article.

Introduction

The literary review is rather short and does not present a state of the art regarding the social relevance of green spaces as a support for methodological options and interpretations that are present in the article.

The objectives and research questions of the research are clearly presented.

Towards Green Cities: Overview of Meta-Trends

This section provides a clear set of principles that guide the Green Urban Agenda considering different strategic documents. It is an interesting brief; however, it isn’t clear how do you connect them with the analysis that follows.

Methodology and Data

This section is very incomplete, therefore additional elements must be added.

Please provide supporting elements to demonstrate Altstetten–Albisrieden represents the overall situation of Zurich in terms of gender and age groups. Please provide data on the similarities of those datasets.

In the study of green space dispersion in the study area, you have used simplified categories for LAI estimates. Please provide valid scientific research that supports the LAI Value that was assumed (Table 2).

Please explain how the authors evaluated ownership and accessibility of every green space. How did you determine such classification?

When addressing distance analysis, please explain what is the mechanism behind the nearest-neighborhood tools, did you use the Euclidian distance? Isn’t it a simplification?

When describing the activities performed by users in green spaces, you mentioned that you used photos and videos. Please explain how this experiment took place, namely expanding the description of the sampling and data collection methods. In addition to the timetables, please elaborate on the number of sampling days and on the seasons of observation.

Please provide sample images to illustrate the process.

Overall, the methodology description should be expanded to allow for a more comprehensive interpretation of the research results.

The ‘Green Urban Agenda’ in Zurich: A Multi-level Analysis

When listing the city of Zurich) level, five principles are presented, however a relation should be presented with the presented strategic documents since the link with the documents listed in Table 4, is not clearly described.

When presenting the green space's attributes for the studied neighborhoods, some of the metrics are not quite clear. Namely, please explain how you calculated the level of access to green spaces (line 236).

Data in Figures 2 and 3 lack quality and don’t present the units used near the graphics.

Connectivity analysis is not clearly explained in the methodology. And its results are presented in a graphic (Figure 4) that lacks quality.

Figure 5 has poor quality.

The Maps presented in Figure 6 have good quality and ease the interpretation of results.

Table 6, it is unclear how did you calculated the distance, duration, and gender distribution. Please carefully describe the data collection methods in the Methodology chapter. It is to me unclear how you reached the presented results, especially when not mentioning using applying any questionnaire.

Once again it is to me unclear what the methodologies applied to address th.

In lines 363-364, you mentioned “The users of these spaces are mostly acquaintances who share a closely-knit social background” – Please explain how did reach this result/conclusion, Especially when not applying any kind of survey.

Discussion

In the discussion, the authors offer a description of the critical evaluation aspects. The analysis of the application of the five principles is rather loose, since the authors, in my opinion, fail to demonstrate the effectiveness of such principles.

For example, the presence of diversity, the perceived quality of green spaces, the distance, or the social inclusion, are all presented without a clear connection with the neighborhood analysis methods.

This article doesn’t offer a discussion including results from similar studies, which could be used as a benchmark for this study.

Conclusions

The conclusions are rather short and occasionally misleading. For example, it is stated that “the findings reveal a disconnect between policy objectives and the actual state of public green spaces in the observed cases”. However, except for point 5 (social inclusion coupled with natural preservation), the results presented in the previous section offer a rather positive interpretation application of most of such principles.

For the overstated reasons I am recommending that this article should be accepted with major revision.

Kind regards,

English is fine but has minor errors.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper addresses interesting topics and well fits the editorial collocation. However, the following main issues should be solved before publishing:

-The reference/comparison to existing researches and study cases that assess the the convergence and/or divergence between policy trends and their implementation in practice is missing or not enough depicted. The authors should place their assumption (lines 97-99) in the existing literature, also highlighting their novel contribute in the scientific scholariship.

-The reasoning for paragraph 2 is weakly linked with the structure of the applied methodology, and no details are provided to explain the criteria for identifying the meta-trends and extracting the cross-cutting principles. (For example, it is not clear why the cross-cutting principles of table 1 are not further processed to "distill" the principles that respond directly to green spaces and their attributes, as done later in 4.1).

- The legend of Fig.1 is illegible

-In the section 3.2 it is not clear how the parameters of accessibility and ownership are used for the classification of green spaces: please clarify what about accessibility in community green spaces and other reserved green spaces

-The methodology section (n.3) might really benefit from the addition of a graphical scheme to relate steps of paragraphs 3.2 and 3.3

-The figure 4 is illegible

-The strict correspondence between paragraphs 3.2 and 4.2 should be better clarified, especially with regard to the connectivity analysis (for example line 164 talks about "connectivity among various green spaces" while the figure 4 seems to be related only to public green spaces). This point is crucial considering that it is the base for paragraph 4.3

- The structure of green spaces in Figure 6 does not match with green space subtypes of Table 5. Why?

-The overall feeling after reading the results is that the green spaces analysis is well conducted and described, while the arguments to discuss the implementation of policy in practice are somehow self-sustaining and not really based on results of the applied methodology. 

Minor proofreading needed

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The research is based on the case study with empirical approach, which gives great opportunity to explore and research theoretical hypotheses and compare with practical experiences. The topic is interesting and provides creative and science-based approach.

Generally speaking, the paper has a satisfying basic structure and Authors followed the instructions for writing as it is in template and I suggest some minor additions in order to produce scientific paper of high quality.

-    The abstract has limitation is 200 words, but the paper’s abstract has more than 260, please make it shorter and more concise, you can move some text to the Introduction part.

-    Start the Introduction section with reasons for conducting the investigation, defining the purpose of the work and its significance and highlight why it is important. Propose/state main research questions and suggest methodological approach.

-    Then place the study in a broad context with literature review, and this Theoretical Framework could be subsection.

-    In Materials and Methods, a diagram of the research procedure is missing, please describe in more detail combination and influences of the different methods.

-    In Discussions give comparison and relationship regarding references mentioned in the Introduction and in the Theoretical framework section, does your research stands on the same principles, bases or gives some new cognition?

-    Conclusions remains too short, the wider scientific and practical contribution and aim of the paper should be proved, the novelty of research methods, any obstacles and limitations, recommendations for further investigation or practical use of findings? For what other researches this model may be suitable? If it is possible, give a list of some new indicators that by your opinion should be included.

-    Tables and charts are fine, very informative, placed adequately.

-    For illustrations No. 1 (part: legend), 4, 5 and 11, please provide substitute with better resolution.

-    The reference list is modest, consists mostly form legal acts, planning documents, global or local agendas and strategies, make effort to investigate other (similar, comparative…) scientific papers and form Theoretical Framework, look back at them and comment on the similarities and differences in approach and results in Discussion section (bullet 3 and 5 of review comments).

There should be done regular proof reading before publishing.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The article is interesting and certainly well structured.

However, there are some necessary additions or insights:

1) The images relating to the in-depth study and analysis of Zurich's District 9 are not visible, the scale at which they are included in the paper is inadequate and they are also out of focus.

2) For Tables 6 and 7, the sources of the data need to be made explicit. Did the authors carry out a survey? Was it based on other documentation?

3) Chapter 3. Methodology and data is not sufficiently described. The descriptions are too brief and do not exhaustively describe the source data and analysis (state of the art). In particular, it is noted that chapter 3.1. Situating the 'Green Urban Agenda' Narrative in Switzerland contains only a list of documents (plans, projects) without any description of them, not even with regard to the type of document (strategic, structural, planning, mandatory, guideline...) and the scale (metropolitan, regional, municipal...). The whole of Chapter 3, and in particular chapter 3.1, should be examined in depth.

4) With regard to the conclusions, which are also very brief, the reviewer suggests that it would be useful if conclusions were not confined to recognising the need for greater accuracy in the design of green spaces in general, and for a reorientation of policies and planning. It would be more useful and scientifically interesting if the authors were able to develop a toolkit, a guide, of parameters, indicators, standards that could be used to verify or design such spaces.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I consider that the article has been substantially improved and I think it should be accepted in its present form

Kind Regards

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have tried to solve all issues. Nonetheless, some of these are still present because basically related to how the study has been conceived and cannot be further improved.

Minor proof reading needed