Visualizing Equitable Housing: A Prototype for a Framework

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have read this article with great interest and would like to thank the editors for giving me a chance to engage with this work. The aim of this article is to develop a prototype for an equitable housing framework using explorative literature study and semi-structured interviews. In my opinion, it is a very relevant and important undertaking. Due to the essence of the work which is revealing the literature, there is a lot of unclassified text in the text which is why readers may not be able to understand what is the real focus of the research, in this regard It will be more descriptive if you present the relationship between " equitable housing:" and classified indicators that you developed throughout literature. There should be a justifiable discussion in the literature part of your study to develop the interrelation. The reason is that I still didn't get the main gap in the study. The relevance of the research problem for the discipline should be highlighted. Why this research is important where is the real problem and how different stakeholders can get benefit from the findings of this study?  abstract is there without any scientific classification. Your abstract should cover Introduction and Reason for conducting the research, the Problem (knowledge gap), Methods, Outcomes (results), and Ramifications (Implications). The abstract should be re-written so that it encompasses summaries of the most important parts of the study results and authors' arguments.   The title of the article has redundancy and it doesn’t represent the real contribution of the article. The introduction doesn’t have any scientific structure to highlight the problem of the study or the gap in the literature. The introduction of the manuscript is not well-organized author may use the strategy of “ big umbrella” to focus on the main problem of the manuscript.  develop some graphical data to classify your literature. Readers may not necessarily consider an appendix as a scientific text to read therefore you should classify the info in the body of the text. In order to increase the internal validity of the study I am highly suggesting to cite the following articles: urbanization, housing quality and health: towards a redirection for housing provision in Nigeria;  living space needs of small housing in the post-pandemic era: Malaga as a case study; enhancing security in affordable housing: the case of prince Fawaz project.- It would be great to work a little bit more on the methodology part to be easily understandable for the readers. Maybe a graphical presentation will help readers to follow your study easily. You may refer to qualitative, systematic reviews or any other methods that are suitable for your study, so it needs some explanation, consider mentioning methods techniques and tactics of your research under a big umbrella.  There is no coherency in the content of the text specified in the introduction part of the article. None of the paragraphs shouldn’t finish with any reference. Your contribution and interpretation are needed. Please apply this comment to all the articles. The conclusion needs to restructure, some essential information which supposes to be in the conclusion part is missing. For example, what are the findings to support the hypothesis of the study? how you described the contribution of your study to the existing literature? etc., the Conclusion of your study could be much more descriptive of the findings that you mentioned in the discussion part. Suggestion for future study is also missing from the last line of the conclusion. It should be used to point out any important shortcomings of your work, which could be addressed by further research, or to indicate directions for further work could take. As indicated in the review, for all the reasons explained above, this reviewer suggests a major revision.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your interest and valuable feedback on this work. The constructive comments are much appreciated, and the suggestions made are very useful. To incorporate your feedback in the manuscript, we made the following alterations:

• The main gap the research aims to tackle is the lack of knowledge transfer on the complex notion of equitable housing towards practice instead of mainly academic knowledge creation, as is now mainly done. A paragraph was added to the introduction, conclusion and abstract to clarify this aim.
• We adapted the abstract to follow a clearer structure.
• A graphical representation of the methodology was developed to provide a clear overview.
• We also want to thank you for the articles you recommended. These were used to illustrate how the equitable housing framework can be used to interpret case studies and establish guidelines for future developments. Both were described in section C of the results.
• The conclusion was adapted and restructured to answer more to the research questions asked in the introduction. It now also contains the possible future research.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Editor and Author

This paper is acceptable but need revision. Necessary corrections should be made and checked.

1.     English of the paper should be polished carefully.

2.     Check for few minor typos and punctuation mistakes within the text,

3.     The difference of the study (originality of the study) from the studies in the literature and the aim of the study should be given in the introduction section with clear sentences.

4.     The aim of the paper is not completely well-specified. The authors could specify more this aspect in the abstract and in the introduction of the manuscript.

 5.  The literature review must be improved by discussing the following works:

Yaylacı M, Uzun Yaylacı E, Özdemir M.E, Ay S., Öztürk Ş. (2022). Implementation of finite element and artificial neural network methods to analyze the contact problem of a functionally graded layer containing crack. Steel and Composite Structures, 45(4), 501-511. https://doi.org/10.12989/scs.2022.45.4.501

Uzun Yaylacı E, Öner E, Yaylacı M, Özdemir M.E, Abushattal A, Birinci A. (2022). Application of artificial neural networks in the analysis of the continuous contact problem. Structural Engineering and Mechanics. 84(1), 35-48. https://doi.org/10.12989/sem.2022.84.1.035

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your interest and feedback in this work. To incorporate your feedback in the manuscript, we made the following alterations:

• The paper has been checked to remove language errors.
• The main gap the research aims to tackle is the lack of knowledge transfer on the complex notion of equitable housing towards practice instead of mainly academic knowledge creation, as is now mainly done. A paragraph was added to the introduction, conclusion and abstract to clarify this aim.
• We adapted the abstract to follow a clearer structure.
• A graphical representation of the methodology was developed to provide a clear overview.
• Two paragraphs were added in section C of the results to illustrate how the framework can be used to interpret the needs of the stakeholders based on existing cases in literature.
• The conclusion was adapted and restructured to answer more to the research questions asked in the introduction. It now also contains the possible future research.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors illustrate their framework in Figure 2, and in Figure 2, all dimensions are ideally distributed at the same level. However, for different cases, the lower and upper limits can be quantified at different levels for different dimensions. I suggest the authors add another figure to illustrate their framework in a real case with quantitative data of upper/lower limits of each dimension (e.g. the neighborhood contract case mentioned in Line 320). This would help the audience to better understand how this framework works and how this framework can help.

Author Response

Dear reveiwer,

Thank you for your interest and valuable feedback on this work. The constructive comments are much appreciated, and the suggestions made are very useful. To incorporate your feedback in the manuscript, we made the following alterations:

• The main gap the research aims to tackle to the lack of knowledge transfer on the complex notion of equitable housing towards practice instead of mainly academic knowledge creation, as is now mainly done. A paragraph was added to the introduction to clarify this aim.
• A graphical representation of the methodology was developed to provide a clear overview.
• In section C of the results, two paragraphs were added to illustrate the upper and lower limits, linked to cases discussed in literature. In further research, we are now analyzing case studies in detail. Limits can be quantitative, but in most cases the upper and under limits will be qualitative limits. This remains within the aim of the framework as it is designed give designers a better and more inclusive understanding of the housing projects they are designing. It also facilitates the discussions between stakeholders.
• Furthermore, we added a figure to graphically illustrate how upper and under limits can be interpreted.
• The conclusion was adapted and restructured to answer more to the research questions asked in the introduction. It now also contains the possible future research.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has been sufficiently improved based on the given comments. It has been developed theoretically. The methodological part of the article has also been developed. It has now clearly stated contribution in the article. I can see that the internal validity of the revised manuscript has also been increased. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your interest and valuable feedback on this work. The constructive comments are much appreciated, and the suggestions made were very useful. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Editor and Author

This paper is acceptable but need revision. Necessary corrections should be made and checked.

1.     English of the paper should be polished carefully.

2.     Check for few minor typos and punctuation mistakes within the text,

3.     The difference of the study (originality of the study) from the studies in the literature and the aim of the study should be given in the introduction section with clear sentences.

4.     The aim of the paper is not completely well-specified. The authors could specify more this aspect in the abstract and in the introduction of the manuscript.

 5.  The literature review must be improved by discussing the following works:

https://doi.org/10.12989/anr.2022.12.4.405.

https://doi.org/10.12989/sem.2021.78.5.585

https://doi.org/10.12989/scs.2022.43.5.661

https://doi.org/10.1590/1679-78251574

 

https://doi.org/10.2140/jomms.2014.9.333

Author Response

Thank you for your interest and feedback on this work. To incorporate your feedback in the manuscript, we made the following alterations:

• The paper has been checked to remove language errors.
• The difference of the study in relation to existing literature is explained from line 98 to line 107.
• The aim of the paper is explained from line 104 to line 124.
• After a second thorough lecture of the references, that were suggested to us to include in our paper, we can only conclude that those reference are 1) very remote from our research (steel structures vs. affordable housing), and 2) bring no methodological added value (numerical analysis vs. qualitative research) for the scope and objectives that were put forward. Further, the reviewers’ comments after our earlier revisions are formulated in such general terms it remains unclear to which part of our work they apply.