Review Reports - A Systematic Review of the Role of Land Use, Transport, and Energy-Environment Integration in Shaping Sustainable Cities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

The updated version has been improved according to the previous suggestion, some of the minor comments are as follows:

Minor comment:

Some Figures could be provided with high resolution i.e. Figure 4.

I would suggest removing the heading 4.5 Methodology, if it is necessary to write please specify this.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The paper represents research done on topics that are pretty wide. Nevertheless, the research is detailed, and the research phases are very well represented. I would like to underline the importance of the literature selection process as a valuable contribution for the researchers who are in the primary stages of their research journey.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

This was an interesting paper. There are few points that must be considered to improve it.

- The achievements of the paper review were not clear. There are some general points in the abstract.

- About SD11, it must be noted that resilience and sustainability are two different concepts.

- Quality of figure 3 is poor.

- Title of section 4.5 is not suitable, since methodology is usually an independent section of research papers.

- Names of two clusters consist of impacts and policy instruments are vague and I suggest to consider a new name.

- Please present the answers to research questions in a table to follow them easily. For example in the discussion section.

- Is figure 6, contribution of this paper?

- The discussion section is too extended.

- I could not understand the limitations in section 4.3. These are limitations in this research or limitations in relation to LUTEI subject?

- The references after covid-19 outbreak, namely after 2020 are not sufficient.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In general, this paper gave a literature review of the role of land use, transport, and energy-environment integration in shaping sustainable cities. The topic falls into the scope of Sustainability very well. However, it has some problems in the manuscript.

(1) In the Introduction, the research background is quite weak. The authors gave little information about why the research is needed and how one variable affects another? Meanwhile, the Introduction lacks logic, and the chapter should be organized carefully.

(2) In the Materials and Methods, the authors only chose two electronic databases to select the literature. Two databases would be insufficient, and the authors may ignore some important papers. I recommend that the authors search the literature in 4-6 databases in total.

(3) The figures and tables should be modified. For example, the captions of some tables cannot illustrate their contents accurately. Some of them have grammar errors (e.g., Figure 1). Figure 4 is too fuzzy to see it clearly.

(4) The paper is relatively long and some unnecessary content exists in the manuscript. I strongly recommend the authors polish the manuscript carefully, so as to make it concise.

(5) Meta-analysis is a popular method for reviewing existing papers. Why did the authors not employ meta-analysis? Through the systematic literature review, this version provides some conclusions but they are not convincing. The authors should add some relevant content in the chapter of “limitations”.

(6) Why the authors choose these four clusters? How can the authors form the framework in Figure 6? I suggest the authors illustrate it.

(7) The language of the paper should be polished as well.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Authors wanted to express their appreciation for taking the time to review our paper, "A systematic review of the role of land use, transport, and energy-environment integration in shaping sustainable cities". Your feedback was very valuable in helping us to improve the quality of our work. We have made the necessary revisions based on your suggestions, and we are pleased to attach the updated version of the paper for your review. I believe that these changes will further strengthen the clarity, improve the language and impact of our study.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Kind regards,

Dorsa Alipour

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Reviewer Comments:

General comments:

It is my pleasure to review the paper entitled “A systematic review of the role of land use, transport, and energy-environment integration in shaping sustainable cities ”. This is an interesting state of the art on the role of land use, transport, and energy-environment integration in shaping sustainable cities. The paper is within the scope of Sustainability. However, it needs some changes before publication. I present the following comments that can help to improve the paper:

Detailed comments:

Introduction

The introduction section lacking in providing the background of this study.
Kindly extend the Introduction part by providing recent references, please also cite other related recent articles (2020-2022) in the introduction section. i.e. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2849-9 and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2021.04.014.
what is the research gap and why this review is important it should elaborate? Methodology:
Why the author didn't include an article from 2022 in the analysis as it is already 2023 now?

How it could help stakeholders who adopt sustainable cities.

Best

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Kind regards,

Dorsa Alipour

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The updated version has been improved and the manuscript is in a good quality. I recommend the publication in the journal.

Reviewer 2 Report

I have no further comments, as the authors have adequately addressed my queries.