New Approach to Landscape-Based Spatial Planning Using Meaningful Geolocated Digital Traces
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors present an interesting topic, of great interest and topicality, such as the incorporation of landscape criteria and the opinion of the population in urban planning.
They consider how to design the activities related to the promenade in such a way as to improve the health of the population. Including among the attractions for the walk the attractiveness of the landscape. For this purpose, they propose to evaluate the itineraries proposed by the municipal administration and those registered in an application of leisure walks (Wikilock), with the facilities and attractive landscapes offered by medium-sized European cities in the Mediterranean area. In this way, the attractiveness of these routes for maintaining the health of the population can be evaluated.
In the Introduction, the possible attractions of carrying out daily activities on foot and the attractions that the "greening" of the city (rewilding, vegetable gardens, ...) may have for this purpose are discussed. No explicit mention is made of the advantages that these walks (time, distance, speed, passing through green spaces, psychological benefits...) can have for the health of people, which is supposed to be the objective of the work.
In the Aims and Objectives section, all the reasoning of the introduction is repeated and, from the point of view of the specific objective of health, nothing is specified. Considering that Wikilock is an application for recreational purposes, as are the walks proposed by the municipalities, it would be good to discuss the usefulness of the data it provides in relation to the supposed objectives of the study, apparently focused on health.
In Materials and Methods, a large number of pages are devoted to justifying the selection of only two cities. For this purpose, they use a map of Europe with a legend that is difficult to see on the map because the colors do not match. It is striking that most of Spain is intermediate (yellow) and most of the rest of Europe is rural (green). The categories on the map in Fig 1 are not explained in the text, despite the large size of this section.
Something similar can be said of the cities listed in Figure 2, e.g. why do Malaga, Cartagena or Tarragona not appear?
Nor is it justified why Alicante and Elche are selected. What makes them useful for this study? What makes them comparable? What differences can justify their selection? Etc.
The Results are very little exploited and are practically a re-reading of the data. Which routes can serve the objective, supposing that there is one? How can the routes be modified to reach this supposed objective?
The Discussion is very poor, practically no discussion of the results obtained, but rather digresses on generalities for which no data are needed (except for the reading of some offprints).
The same can be said of the Conclusions, which should be clearly distinguished from the discussion. In particular, conclusions are not based on the results of the study, but again on general considerations that can be made without any data collection work.
The authors should reflect on what they wanted to do by proposing a work of this type: what do the official and Wikilock routes offer? What landscape quality do the points they visit offer: rewilding, cultural, vegetable gardens, views, identity...? And above all, as the authors seem to be looking for, the health benefits of the different routes. Once this was done, they should ask themselves how to improve these routes, how to improve the quality of the cities according to the objective of the article? Etc. And then, if, indeed, the data they collect and the relationships that may exist between them and the external variables, answer these questions. Otherwise, the article is nothing more than an essay that can be written without data.
Author Response
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Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper addresses an important and interesting problem -New landscape-based planning perspectives from meaningful social traces. I found the presented work really interesting and would thank the authors for that. However, some issues still need to be improved:
(1) --The manuscript is more likely a report not an article, pay attention to the format of scientific article writing.
(2) --The resolution of these images is so low that I can't see the contents clearly. Please increase the resolution of the images and add the corresponding elements such as compass and scale.
(3) --Introduction: The author should summarize the scientific problems resolved and unresolved in the previous study in the end of the section.
(4) --3.1. Materials and sources: What is the basis for selecting a 50m buffer(Fig.3)?
(5) --1.3. Research design and method: The research method is not detailed. This part only introduces the work steps, each step lacks detailed expression, and does not introduce the application software and computing environment. At the same time, I think these methods are lack of innovation.
(6) --Results: The reflection of your findings against the standing international literature is unfortunately mostly lacking, and this should be addressed too.
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
Under the background that urban planning and design have once again become the core issues related to citizens' health, this paper expounds the relationship between nature, pedestrian scale and community, planning and landscape, and discusses the above issues by using the route proposed by the city authorities, the digital footprint generated by Wikiloc users and registered on the website, Google map data and the general types of representative urban areas retrieved by Open Street Maps, which has certain academic value, but there are still some problems.
First of all, the research background is not fully developed, and the achievements of academic research in this field are not fully reflected.
Secondly, the pictures are not clear enough, especially in Figures 4 and 5.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear all,
this manuscript has potential; however considerable improvements should be made before it can be considered to publication, such as:
- the introduction should emphatize the novelty of this study for the scientific thematic field
- the authors should clearly defined what is a “medium-sized city” and why the literature consider to go further with that concept
- the discussion section almost does not exists... a discussion should be a section where the authors results will be discussed and confronted with previous similar studies and researches and add those references - therefore , we can advance in the thematic literature
- the conclusion should emphatise the managerial implications
- the study has no limitations and future research lines
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Although the text has improved a bit, it still contains, in my opinion, serious flaws for an article to be published in a scientific journal. I believe that, with a little more effort, authors could significantly improve their contribution, which, despite the criticisms I make, I still find interesting. These are summarized as follows:
1. One of the main points is that the study is justified on the basis of health improvements, but this factor is not taken into account at all in the rest of the work. Wouldn't everything be clearer if the real objectives of the study were explained directly? There is a lot about integration between natural and social points of view, but in the development of the work nothing is done about this integration.
2. Explain clearly what the objectives of the work are. For example, with the excuse of the health of the inhabitants and taking advantage of the fact that you can see where people go (walking-related activities), you can take advantage of the opportunity to include landscape criteria in urban planning. The first sentence of the introduction is "A critical issue addressed in city planning is the health of a city's inhabitants" but then the health issue disappears. E.g. Include the explanations given to me as a blue answer in issue 1.1 in the introduction and lighten the text with all the wording about "greening," ..... The text in blue has three paragraphs: the first two can be used to start the introduction and the last one to end it.
3. Issue 1.2. Again, the explanations in blue that are given to me are better, i.e. more useful for the understanding of the work. Why not introduce them in the text and lighten that already exists?
4. Issue 1.3.- OK with the map corrections.
5. Issue 1.4 and 1.5. The problem is that a lot of space is devoted to something that can be summarized a lot and does not add anything of interest to the work. I think this should be summarized a lot. The absence of some cities, despite all the space used in this section, indicates negligence, so it is important to put them all (or none at all).
6. Issue 1.5.- Again, the explanations given in blue are more complete than those included in the text. If the recommendations of the previous section are followed and the information in blue is added, this section would improve notably.
6. Issue 1.5.- Again, the explanations given in blue are more complete than those included in the text. If the recommendations of the previous section are followed and the information in blue is added, this section would be significantly improved.
7. Issue 1.7:- Again why is the blue text not included in the text of the paper, particularly in the discussion? Anyway just proving that a source can provide data does not justify a research paper. One way to take advantage of this data would be: what information does Wickilock provide that municipal roads or Google APISs don't, etc.: "natural" sites, landscape quality, sense of pretentiousness, ... I.e. evaluate what advantages this might have. Some of this has already been included in the new wording. But I think that making this small balance between cultural services detected by these different data sources would greatly improve the understanding of the interest of these data to incorporate in urban planning.
8. Issue 1.8.- Discussion and conclusions are two different sections. The reason is obvious: the conclusions cannot contain speculative paragraphs like the discussion.
9. Issue 1.9.- Include blue text in the conclusions.
10. In summary:
a. Specify clearly what the objectives of the work are (and do not confuse the reader with the health).
b. Reduce the introduction, synthesizing its content.
c. Reduce the explanation of the intermediate cities, synthesizing its content.
d. Synthesize the results.
e. Improve the discussion and separate it from the conclusions.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I'm glad to see that you have revised my suggestion. I think the article is acceptable after minor revisions.
Author Response
We would like to thank your constructive feedback and previous suggestions
Reviewer 3 Report
agree to accept
Author Response
We would like to thank your constructive feedback and previous suggestions
Reviewer 4 Report
I m okay with this revised version
Author Response
We would like to thank your constructive feedback and previous suggestions
