Review Reports - Riverside Placemaking outside Big Cities—The Case Study of Three Polish Rivers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article focuses on an interesting and important issue. However, it needs improvement and additions before publication. In this respect, I suggest:
- clearly state the purpose of the research, provide sub-objectives or research questions or a hypothesis (in the introduction).
In the Abstract it is written: The main goal was to show how public places are created along rivers outside large cities, with secondary goals to determine the types and forms of these places, as well as their distribution. But what is important is what this research is for. What impact are they intended to have on the development of science (e.g. which disciplines) and practice e.g. urban planning.
- To enrich the scientific basis, in terms of the study of riverside areas in rural areas. It is not true that there are none. Man has settled by rivers and has always developed them.
- improve Figure 1 - it is not clear from this under which geographical conditions (e.g. settlement, transport accessibility, landscape conditions, etc.) the studied river sections are located. References to this are in section 3.4. So maybe a general geographic map would be better.
- Justify why only the spatial distribution of identified sites for the Wieprz River is shown. What about the other rivers? Is the Wieprz representative of all those surveyed? Maybe it would be better to illustrate the same for the other rivers as well.
- In section 3.2 there is another definition of a public place. I propose to move this definition to the introduction and just refer to it in this section.
- restructure the structure of the article by adding: a literature review (with reference to river management in rural areas), a discussion - illustrate the results obtained against the background of the current state of scientific knowledge and research needs: for science and practice.
- expand the bibliography.

Author Response

Thank you very much for reviewing our work and preparing a thorough review. Of course, we agree with the reviewer’s comments and would like to make corrections according to the suggestions.

Attached are the responses to the comments and the corrected manuscript.

- clearly state the purpose of the research, provide sub-objectives or research questions or a hypothesis (in the introduction).

We specified the research aim and hypotheses in the last paragraph of the introduction section

In the Abstract it is written: The main goal was to show how public places are created along rivers outside large cities, with secondary goals to determine the types and forms of these places, as well as their distribution. But what is important is what this research is for. What impact are they intended to have on the development of science (e.g. which disciplines) and practice e.g. urban planning.

Our primary goal is indeed to determine the optimal way of shaping and managing riverfront public spaces, which is a highly practical objective for the field of Urban and Landscape Planning. However, this article is only a part of our research, specifically an initial assessment or diagnosis of placemaking in riverfront areas outside large cities. Therefore, we did not explicitly state our primary goal in this article, because it is not fully addressed in this piece. We could be accused of not achieving our intended goal in this work. Practical conclusions can only be drawn after analyzing a significantly larger amount of data, primarily from more extensive interviews. However, to respond to the comments in this review and to better justify the relevance of this topic, we have slightly revised the introduction by including our primary goal, with an explanation that this article is just the first stage toward achieving this goal. We hope this will provide the reader with greater clarity regarding the purpose of this work. We have also attempted to clarify the general and specific objectives of this publication both in the article itself and in the abstract.

In the abstract, we have added the following sentence:

“The main goal was to demonstrate the specificity of placemaking in riverfront areas outside large cities and to investigate the answers to the following questions: 1) How do public spaces emerge there? 2) Which entities are responsible for their creation, type, form, and location?”

- To enrich the scientific basis, in terms of the study of riverside areas in rural areas. It is not true that there are none. Man has settled by rivers and has always developed them.

We do not claim that there are no studies on riverside areas in rural areas. We only wrote about the small number of studies on placemaking in rural areas. Indeed, there are few such studies, and if they exist, they do not address the broader topic of formal and informal placemaking. Therefore, comparing placemaking in rural and urban areas would be difficult to accomplish. Our article attempts to partially fill this gap.

However, we agree that it is worth enriching the scope of the cited literature. Therefore, we have added a few references in the introduction and discussion sections that will broaden the presented image of rural public spaces and riverfront areas.

- improve Figure 1 - it is not clear from this under which geographical conditions (e.g. settlement, transport accessibility, landscape conditions, etc.) the studied river sections are located. References to this are in section 3.4. So maybe a general geographic map would be better.

We agree with the reviewer’s comment, figure 1 has been corrected (see corrected manuscript)

- Justify why only the spatial distribution of identified sites for the Wieprz River is shown. What about the other rivers? Is the Wieprz representative of all those surveyed? Maybe it would be better to illustrate the same for the other rivers as well.

We wanted to illustrate the spatial distribution and scale of phenomena with this figure - it is not about the precise presentation of all the results, as we chose a table for this purpose and additionally added charts where the results are collected, clear, and easier to interpret. We selected the most average section of the river for this purpose, where there are not too many objects characteristic of only one river visible. The presented section of the Wieprz River was best suited for this purpose.

Perhaps our intentions with this illustration were not clear to the readers. For this purpose, we included a short comment where we refer to this figure in the text. To increase the readability of the presented data, two additional charts were also added.

- In section 3.2 there is another definition of a public place. I propose to move this definition to the introduction and just refer to it in this section.

Corrected as suggested by the reviewer

- restructure the structure of the article by adding: a literature review (with reference to river management in rural areas), a discussion - illustrate the results obtained against the background of the current state of scientific knowledge and research needs: for science and practice.

As mentioned in response to previous comments, at this stage, we do not want to expand too much on the aspect of river management in rural areas, as such conclusions will come after the entire research cycle is completed and more data is analyzed. The current introduction provides a literature review on placemaking, rural design, as well as the specifics of rural and riverside areas, and these are the issues we want to focus on in this paper. However, following the suggestion, we have created a separate discussion section, where we highlight our results in relation to the existing state of knowledge.

- expand the bibliography.

The following references have been added:

Krier, R. and Rowe, C Urban Space. Academy Editions, London,1979

Dawid Soszyński, Cyprian Jaruga, Barbara Sowińska-Świerkosz, 2015: A river in a rural public space in the early 1940s: a case study of the Bug river valley (East Poland). [w:] Recovering lost landscapes. Edited by Vujadin Ivanišević, Tatjana Veljanovski, David Cowley, Grzegorz Kiarszys & Ivan Bugarski. Published by: Institute of Archaeology, Belgrade and Aerial Archaeology Research Group. Belgrade 2015. p.35-44.
Wolski A., Jankowski G., Riverside space and local communities. Selected theoretical aspects. Ecocycles, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 33-38 (2019), DOI: 10.19040/ecocycles.v5i2.154
Putro, H.P.N; Putra, M.A.H; Ilhami, M.R.; Handy, M.R.N.; Zulfah, S. Social Interaction of Riverside Communities on River Utilization in Banua Anyar Village. The Innovation of Social Studies Journal, Vol. 4, (1), September 2022: 46-52, DOI: https://doi.org/10.20527/iis
Moreira C. O. and Santos N. 2010, New opportunities for water environments. River tourism and water leisure activities. In: Water and Tourism. Resources Management, Planning and Sustainability. Centro de Estudos Geograficos, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, pp 147-168.
Veitch J., Salmon J., Ball K., Crawford D., Timperio A., 2013, Do features of public open spaces vary between urban and rural areas? Preventive Medicine, Volume 56, Issue 2, February 2013, Pages 107-111
Kuehnel H., Włodarczyk A.M., 2014, Urban and rural codes of public spaces [in:] Traditional and new public spaces in rural areas (Tradycyjne i nowe przestrzenie publiczne na obszarach wiejskich). Ed.: A.M.Włodarczyk, Oficyna Wydawnicza PWSZ, Nysa.
Xu, H.; Huang, L. (2022). Comparative Analysis of Urban and Rural Public Space Environment Design Based on Multimedia Information. Advances in Multimedia. 2022. 1-11. 10.1155/2022/1446545.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper assesses the public places created along rivers outside large cities in three river sketches of Poland. I find your study very interesting, well-written and you clearly define the background and the novelty of the study and the methodology you used. Moreover, you have done a good description of the results you achieved and discussed with the other authors.

Please find below minor comments to improve the reading and understanding of your manuscript:

Line 20: Please consider defining the acronym “DIY” the first time appears in the abstract and in the manuscript (line 191).

Line 28: I suggest you add relevant references for this statement.

Figure 1: The BRDA river studied section is a non-continuous sketch. I suggest adding some explanation justifying this in your manuscript.

Line 227: Move the “.” after “form” at the end of the table caption.

Line 313: Consider using “Figure 4” instead of “Fig. 4”.

Line 450: In some references, you use abbreviations for the journal title and in many others no. Please consider unifying the style.

Line 452 Please double-check the spelling of “Archtectural.”

Line 455: Please double-check the use of capital letters when you use the DOI term in the references section. Doi or DOI? Double-check as well the use of links or doi ID. For instance reference [3] has a DOI id but also a link https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069231151304 and in other cases, with both possible options, you chose the link. I suggest you follow the journal rules or be consistent with your decision in the reference section

Line 457: Consider removing the semicolon symbol at the end of book references in the section (for instance in lines 468, 480, 522 and 528).

Author Response

Thank you very much for reviewing our work and preparing a thorough review. Of course, we agree with the reviewer’s comments and would like to make corrections according to the suggestions.

Line 20: Please consider defining the acronym “DIY” the first time appears in the abstract and in the manuscript (line 191).

The abbreviation has been expanded as suggested.

Line 28: I suggest you add relevant references for this statement.

Added citations of publications:

Krier, R. and Rowe, C Urban Space. Academy Editions, London,1979
Lofland, L. The Public Realm: Exploring the City's Quintessential Social Territiry, New York, NY: Aldine De Gruyter, 1998
Shaftoe, H. Convivial Urban Spaces: Creating Effective Public Places. Easthscan, London, UK, 2008

Figure 1: The BRDA river studied section is a non-continuous sketch. I suggest adding some explanation justifying this in your manuscript.

The discontinuity arises from the omission of sections where the river flows through lakes. We have added an appropriate explanation in the text, in Chapter 2.1 Study areas

Line 227: Move the “.” after “form” at the end of the table caption.

Thank you for pointing out the unnecessary punctuation mark. It has been removed

Line 313: Consider using “Figure 4” instead of “Fig. 4”.

Changed to Figure 4

Line 450: In some references, you use abbreviations for the journal title and in many others no. Please consider unifying the style.

Thank you very much for pointing out the use of journal abbreviations. We have already encountered such practices before. The correct use of journal names will be established with the editor.

Line 452 Please double-check the spelling of “Archtectural.”

Corrected

Thank you very much for this comment. We will establish this with the editor.

Line 457: Consider removing the semicolon symbol at the end of book references in the section (for instance in lines 468, 480, 522 and 528).

Corrected

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The changes made to the text increase its scientific value. The article can be published.