A Study of the Relationship between Human Behavior and Urban Design during the Winter in a High-Snowfall Urban Area

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study delves into understanding walking and staying behaviors, examining their correlation with snowy outdoor environments. Analysis of survey data uncovers that despite a decrease in pedestrian numbers at AKAPLA Plaza during colder temperatures, the ratio of staying behavior to pedestrian count remains consistent. The study identifies three design principles to promote the use of open urban spaces in winter. While the paper holds innovative value, it can be refined in the following aspects:

1. The abstract acknowledges the limited research on outdoor environment-behavior dynamics in winter cities with snow, suggesting a need for analyzing gaps in current technologies and applications.

2. The introduction, packed with content, could benefit from separating the literature review into a dedicated section, emphasizing research motivation and novelty.

3. Section 2, spotlighting AKAPLA Plaza in central Sapporo, Japan, may benefit from a flowchart to visually map out the research trajectory.

4. The experimental section would benefit from incorporating comparative and more exhaustive statistical analyses to validate the proposed model's efficacy.

5. In the conclusion, it is crucial to highlight the study's key contributions and managerial implications for relevant industries, along with outlining future developmental trends.

Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I read the article on the relationship Between Human Behavior and Urban Design During the Winter in a High-Snowfall Urban Area.

The article covers an interesting topic, this type of analysis can be an added value for science. However, the article requires refinement and may be published after the comments of the reviewer(s) are introduced.

Issues to improve:

1. Expand the literature review part, there are too few cited sources in the article (there should be at least 60). Additionally, section and section titles, e.g. 1.1. and 1.2, in addition 1.1.2, 1.1.3 and 1.1.4 are duplicates.

2. The Methodology section should be called Materials and methods. There is no description of the research assumptions - the purpose of the research, research problems (hypotheses, if any), organization and course of the research. In addition, it is also a good idea to describe the research approach and present the main stages of the research in a diagram.

3. Basically, the entire current Discussion section should be in Results - it is a further analysis of the authors' research, and the conclusions and recommendations should also be expanded.

4. Expand the Discussion part with similar research by other authors, preferably from other countries, to make comparisons.

5. Expand the Conclusion section, in addition to the conclusions from the Results section, what recommendations should be made for the development of this or similar areas, and what should be done in the future.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper takes AKAPLA Plaza in Sapporo, Japan as the research area to reveal the relationship between people's usage behaviors in downtown open spaces and elements of outdoor winter environments (such as snow), and proposes strategies to improve people's usage behaviors in open spaces. In my opinion, this is an article that is very close to our daily life. I believe this article will be an inspiration to many urban designers in cold regions. However, there are still some problems in this article that need to be modified and worthy of discussion. Therefore, this article needs a minor revision before publication. The following are my opinions.

1. In the Introduction section 1.1.2, 1.1.3 and 1.1.4, you used three of the same titles entitled "Spatial Design and People in Public Spaces". However, each of these three paragraphs expresses a different direction of the main idea, so it is better to give these three paragraphs different titles. Titles 1.1 and 1.2 have the same problem.

2 In parts 1.1.2, 1.1.3 and 1.1.4 of Introduction, I think the three paragraphs are the expansion of part 1.1.1. Is it reasonable to put the four parts on the same level?

3. In part 1.1.4 of Introduction, you cited three previous studies on public space environment and people's use behavior to confirm the close relationship between them, but did not give a detailed description of the research conclusions. Selecting one of these studies and appropriately adding conclusive descriptions should better enable readers to understand how the public space environment affects people's use behavior. Because this part is more relevant to your research , it should not be so thin.

4. L218: “Only the central walking path of the plaza is heated; the other areas are reserved for snow accumulation. "" the central walking path" I want you to mark it in Figure 2.

5. It is recommended to adjust the position of Table 1 so that both parts are placed on the same page.

6. About figure 3's note，if there is something wrong with the format of the word "foliage" in" except for foliage season ". The rest of the line charts have the same problem.

7. L307-312: The paragraph font size is different from the preceding and following paragraph fonts.

English can be improved further.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors better addressed most of my comments and suggestions. I have not any other comments, and recommend the manuscript to be published.  

English need to be further improved.