Bringing Food Back to the City: A Critical Review of Green Infrastructure Concepts for Integrating Agriculture

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, 

The article entitled ‘Bringing food back to the city: a review of green infrastructure concepts for integrating agriculture’ addresses the current and important issue of integrating urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) with the concept of green infrastructure (GI).
After reading the article, I have the following comments and observations:
1. Introduction

The authors took an interdisciplinary approach to their research and reviewed the literature, which allowed them to trace the conceptual evolution of GI and the role of agriculture in spatial planning.
However, they omitted Thünen's very important concept, known as the theory of agricultural production zones, developed in the 19th century. The introduction of this concept would change the approach to the perception of the role of agriculture in the city (the existence of one larger city creating a central market).

I suggest introducing the research objective and research questions at the end of this chapter.

2. Materials and Methods 

Insufficient methodological precision
The description of methods is mainly declarative and conceptual. 
The authors do not clearly specify whether a systematic literature review or an expert review was used. There is a lack of information on the source search procedure, databases (e.g. Scopus, Web of Science), keywords, and criteria for inclusion and exclusion of publications.

The number of publications analysed and the method of their selection are not indicated.

I suggest introducing criteria for selecting the approach (CPUL, food urbanism, agroecology, edible GI). There is no justification for why other relevant trends or planning models were not included.

In the reviewer's opinion, this chapter resembles a literature review chapter.
I suggest separating the description of the research procedure from the conceptual interpretation.

3. Results

The research topic presented is interesting and has high practical value, but it requires thorough revisions in terms of both content and editing.
The text contains a significant amount of repetition, e.g. the same information on the scope of edible green infrastructure and the exclusion of intensive forms of agriculture appears several times in almost identical wording. This may indicate a lack of editorial control over the structure of the text. 
I suggest eliminating duplication and streamlining the narrative.

The authors cite definitions and examples (Veneto, Matosinhos), but do not provide an in-depth comparative analysis or critical reflection on the scalability of these solutions in other urban contexts. 
I suggest introducing references to potential implementation constraints, such as property conflicts, investment pressure or institutional barriers.

The reviewer noted a lack of terminological consistency, including in the transition between the concepts of ‘agricultural park’, ‘suburban landscape’, ‘peripheral areas’ and ‘food reserves’, without their clear definition.
I suggest clarifying their meaning.

5. Conclusions
 The authors formulate claims such as the potential of a ‘transformative lens’ or the ability to create ‘more equitable and resilient cities’, but they do not present clear mechanisms through which GI–UPA integration would lead to such effects. 
There is also no reference to implementation constraints, institutional costs, or the risk of implementation failures.

Best regards,
Reviewer

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We thank you for your constructive and insightful feedback on our manuscript. We appreciate the time and consideration you devoted to its evaluation. Your comments were instrumental in improving both the methodological and structural aspects of the study. In this response, we outline the specific revisions made in line with your suggestions. We also kindly invite you to review the revised manuscript in its entirety, as the cumulative changes have contributed to a more coherent and solid final version. For transparency, a point-by-point response is provided in the attached document, followed by the full revised manuscript. All the improvements are highlighted in red to be easily identified. We believe that the manuscript has been significantly strengthened as a result of your valuable input.

Best regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article consists of a literature review. It is relatively focused: it examines the integration of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) into green infrastructure (GI) planning concepts, from a European perspective.

The paper is well organized, with a methodological section followed by the main results and their discussion. References to the articles analyzed are explicit throughout the demonstration. The results section is clearly organized, beginning with a chronological subsection that provides background on the concepts discussed and the evolution from UPA to GI suggested by the literature, then focusing on the contemporary situation. Supporting tables are useful in providing an overview of the concepts and how they are mobilized. The discussion section then introduces a cross-referenced view with other concepts, i.e. principles of Landscape Ecology under the triple dimension of multifunctionality, connectivity and spatial heterogeneity, and lastly current opportunities and challenges in GI-UPA integration. All of this is clear and quite easy to read.

 

Nevertheless, before publication, I believe that the methodology section needs to be strengthened, particularly point 2.5 on materials, in several respects:

- What is the study period? From what year to what year? I see only one reference for 2024 and none for 2025, which is a bit surprising for a literature review on debates that are supposed to be ongoing; similarly, there are not many older references... The study period should be clearly defined.

- Which disciplines or studies domains were considered and which were not? Again, this does not seem entirely clear, and the authors come from scientific and technical disciplines rather than the social sciences, for example.

- The geographical area of Europe is not entirely precise: which countries are actually represented in the studies that are finally cited in the article? It is also important to be clear about the fields of study.

- Finally, what were the actual criteria used to select the articles and publications discussed? Did the authors use databases or platforms, and if so, which ones? Why were these choices made (this is important as it supports the hypothesis of conceptual evolution, which is the added value of the paper), with what strong points and, inevitably, what limitations?

All these points aim to more precisely define the scope of the review and of the proposed results, which, as I said, are well presented. I see this as a minor change to the work carried out (mainly clarification), but one that is really essential for readers before publication.

 

Besides, the conclusion should include some recent references from 2025 if the text does not already do so.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We thank you for your constructive and insightful feedback on our manuscript. We appreciate the time and consideration you devoted to its evaluation. Your comments were instrumental in improving both the methodological and structural aspects of the study. In this response, we outline the specific revisions made in line with your suggestions. We also kindly invite you to review the revised manuscript in its entirety, as the cumulative changes have contributed to a more coherent and solid final version. For transparency, a point-by-point response is provided in the attached document, followed by the full revised manuscript. All the improvements are highlighted in red to be easily identified. We believe that the manuscript has been significantly strengthened as a result of your valuable input.

Best regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We thank you for your constructive and insightful feedback on our manuscript. We appreciate the time and consideration you devoted to its evaluation. Your comments were instrumental in improving both the methodological and structural aspects of the study. In this response, we outline the specific revisions made in line with your suggestions. We also kindly invite you to review the revised manuscript in its entirety, as the cumulative changes have contributed to a more coherent and solid final version. For transparency, a point-by-point response is provided in the attached document, followed by the full revised manuscript. All the improvements are highlighted in red to be easily identified. We believe that the manuscript has been significantly strengthened as a result of your valuable input.

Best regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors significantly improved the work in accordance with the reviewer's comments. The remark is that a few current sources should be added to the work, preferably from the group of mdpi magazines or some other group with a high IF (Q1, Q2) that deal with the current topic of urban agriculture in the wider area of ​​Southeast Europe, because the authors did not take into account the Balkan countries, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia.

Author Response

We have addressed the reviewer’s comment by incorporating a recent reference focused on the Western Balkans. Specifically, we added the following sentence in the 'Discussion', 'Policy frameworks' section, page18, line 719: “A similar situation is observed in non-EU countries, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and North Macedonia, where legal frameworks and regulations remain less developed and insufficient to support agroecological transitions [83].” This addition helps broaden the geographical scope of the analysis.