Review Reports - Restoring Waterways, But for Whom? Environmental Justice, Human Rights, and the Unhoused

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper discusses an important topic and one that is relevant to the journal. The basic approach is appropriate to addressing the research question but the paper would benefit from better structuring, more methodological detail, and a more formal writing style oriented toward the academic journal. Specifically:

The paper uses a two-pronged methodological approach involving literature review and case study. The literature review, however, is mixed in with the Introduction and Methods sections and not part of the Results. Moreover, the literature review is fairly superficial and lacks both depth and structure. I suggest the authors either revise the paper to focus on the case studies and treat the literature portion of the paper as one would in a typical research paper and background material in the Introduction or do a more formal, rigorous, and expanded review of the related literature the summary findings of which would be presented in the Results section along with the case studies.

The case studies are interesting but lack methodological detail on how they were selected and investigated. The authors mention screening nearly a dozen potential case studies and how they narrowed them down but from there mention nothing on once chosen how they were investigated including field study and other primary/secondary source documentation. From the case study summaries and references it appears secondary sources were used but this needs to be mentioned explicitly including the range of source material.

Table 1 appears to be a distillation of insights from the case studies. As these emerge from the analysis they should be presented in the Results section, and leave the Discussion to reflect upon the findings in the context of the research literature along with discussion of study limitations and future directions.

Minor issues:

More formal delivery needed—avoid contractions and other breezy language and sentence structure.

Need to better introduce and reference the origin of the environmental justice principles mentioned in the Methods section. As written they seem to come out of nowhere as if they are commonly known. The paper cites Moran who in turn cites what I assume is the original source, and while the former is more topically oriented to the present paper the original should be mentioned more explicitly and also cited.

Fig 1 cites a website that is a dead link; it is unclear whether the authors of this paper developed the word cloud based on that citation or if the figure was taken or adapted from that source in which case it needs to be acknowledged along with copyright permissions.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

See above

Author Response

The paper discusses an important topic and one that is relevant to the journal. The basic approach is appropriate to addressing the research question, but the paper would benefit from better structuring, more methodological detail, and a more formal writing style oriented toward the academic journal. Specifically:

Comment 1:The paper uses a two-pronged methodological approach involving literature review and case study. The literature review, however, is mixed in with the Introduction and Methods sections and not part of the Results. Moreover, the literature review is fairly superficial and lacks both depth and structure. I suggest the authors either revise the paper to focus on the case studies and treat the literature portion of the paper as one would in a typical research paper and background material in the Introduction or do a more formal, rigorous, and expanded review of the related literature the summary findings of which would be presented in the Results section along with the case studies.

Response:

This paper, a scoping study, was presented at the Fabos Conference in April. It is not a typical research paper, but rather presents our accomplishments to date, and makes the case for further research. For those reasons, it is too soon to present all of the things that you might be looking for (such as additional depth, more developed literature review, etc.); those elements will be addressed in the future grant-funded work, to be completed with graduate student collaborators. Additional content has been added to emphasize that, as noted below.

The suggestion of more formal language was well-taken, and we have adjusted the text accordingly. Much of the structure of the paper is dictated by the journal’s section headings, however we have adjusted some of the content, added some subheadings, and relocated some discussions to better serve the larger goals of the paper.

Comment 2:

Response:

The use of secondary sources is now explicitly mentioned in the body of the paper. Additional content explains more about research philosophy and methods and the relationship between the two, especially in the context of the interdisciplinary work we do. Two sections of extended discussion have been added, addressing the topic background on our epistemological frameworks and research methods.

“The methods used in this preliminary study include several approaches that are grounded in social sciences and the humanities, and frequently used in the fields of landscape architecture, environmental studies, human geography, and similar disciplines. As explained by Deming and Swaffield (2011), research methods manifest epistemological assumptions (objective, constructive, and subjective), and they also show the relationship of the research to theory (induction, abduction, and deduction); our work is primarily constructivist and subjective and uses inductive approaches to build inferences from the information we draw upon.”

“Though it came as a surprise to us, the process of crafting the arguments in this manuscript continued, even as we reviewed and edited our work. Feedback from reviewers raised questions that helped us home in on exactly what we are arguing for, and this helped us to better understand what we are asserting, and why. The socratic process encouraged by these conferences, has multiple facets, and another was well-captured by Swaffield and Deming in one of their articles on research strategies: “the knowledge base of a professional discipline is this a continual process of transformation, as the tacit knowledge of a professional practice is encoded in scholarly work, and as research investigations and theoretical speculations are tested against practice,” (2011, p. 44).

Swaffield, S., & Deming, M. E. (2011). Research strategies in landscape architecture: Mapping the terrain. Journal of Landscape Architecture, 6(1), 34-45.

Comment 3:

Table 1 appears to be a distillation of insights from the case studies. As these emerge from the analysis they should be presented in the Results section and leave the Discussion to reflect upon the findings in the context of the research literature along with discussion of study limitations and future directions.

Response:

Table 1 was adjusted to reflect these and other reviewer comments and most fully reflect our insights. It has now been relocated to the Results section of the paper, as suggested.

Comment 4:

More formal delivery needed—avoid contractions and other breezy language and sentence structure.

Response:

The prose has been adjusted accordingly; first drafted as a conference paper, what you saw reflects its origin as an oral presentation.

Comment 5:

Need to better introduce and reference the origin of the environmental justice principles mentioned in the Methods section. As written, they seem to come out of nowhere as if they are commonly known. The paper cites Moran who in turn cites what I assume is the original source, and while the former is more topically oriented to the present paper the original should be mentioned more explicitly and also cited.

Response:

For accuracy, Moran’s work was cited, and additional clarification about the 1991 EJ Principles was added as a citation, to best inform the readers. We appreciate the reminder that not everyone is familiar with scholarship in the field of environmental justice. The accurate citation for it:

First National People of Color Summit. (1991). Principles of Environmental Justice. https://ejnet.org/ej/principles/ Last accessed: September 19, 2025.

Comment 6:

Response:

The link was confirmed as live, last week, and we add this to help clarify that ‘last accessed: September 19, 2025.’ The permission from the Hong Kong-based author is in progress.

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of ISSN 2073-445X-R1

Upon reviewing this manuscript, I find it much improved. There are still several areas that need additional clarification, however, most notably the methods. I’ve provided detailed comments on each section of the manuscript below to help guide revision efforts.

Abstract

Consider changing “Working inductively, we conduct a scoping study that examines published literature, news stories, and some examples from the field, in order to provide some analysis about the intersections among waterway restoration and environmental justice, in connection with the interests of unhoused people.” to “Working inductively, we conduct a scoping study of published literature, news stories, and examples from the field, that explores the intersection of waterway restoration and environmental justice in the context of the interests of unhoused people.” The original sentence overuses “some” and makes your work sound overly tentative.
The last sentence of the abstract needs to be rewritten. It is inappropriate to begin it with And. Its also not clear what is meant by design guidance in this context. Design guidance for what?

Introduction

Line 51: Change “to help focus on” to “to understand”
Line 56-59: This statement seems vague. What do you mean by the range of elements that come into play? Are you unpacking the array of elements that influence how the interests of people experiencing homelessness are being addressed in waterways restoration projects? If so, perhaps just say that.
Consider changing the last sentence of the introduction to: Our formative study concludes with research recommendations in order to help guide future work on the processes of change that shape public spaces and waterways, and the opportunities they present for unhoused people.

Materials and Methods:

General comments

The methods many different topics but those topics have not been defined using distinct headers, which makes it hard to parse. Consider separating the topics out with their own headers for increased readability. At a minimum, there should be:
- a section describing why you chose to use the environmental justice framework (methods paragraphs 2),
- a section about unhoused people (methods paragraph 3),
- a section about what is presently known and what the research gap is (methods paragraph 4 and to some extent 5-9 – this could be reorganized so that what is known is presented first and then the research gap is defined…right now it’s the reverse), and
- a section outlining your approach for addressing this gap (last two paragraphs).
Overall, there is a lot of literature review within your methods (particularly paragraphs 5-9) and its not indicated until after you present it that lit review was one of your methods. This makes the material you cover seem out of place (more like an extended introduction than methods). I recommend restructuring the methods section to address this issue. The subsections described above will help facilitate this.

Detail-level comments

Line 70-71: I’m not sure that this statement about the quality of Julian Fabos’ job is really important here. Perhaps reword to “over the decades, Julian Fabos has placed myriad practitioners in conversation with academics at the Fabos Conferences, the topic of this volume.
The sentence that begins on line 78 is largely redundant. Consider combining with the prior sentence or deleting.
Line 94-96: This sentence should end on “specifically in connection with unhoused people”. You can delete the rest of the sentence with no loss of content.
Line 116 – The sentence beginning “From our research…” is confusing. Perhaps rewrite more concisely as “This topic has not been addressed by other researchers”. Then instead of a semi colon, start a new sentence.
Line 117 – it is not sufficient to say that you used databases for searching for scholarly literature. We need to know what databases and what your search terms were in order for the work to be reproducible.
Line 120 – you can delete “in that connection”. Its not needed to convey your point.
Line 197 – please explicitly describe (1) the number of cases you considered and (2) the metrics you used to determine how much information was needed for a case to be presented here.

Results

Line 286-287 is a fragment. Please complete the thought this sentence was intended to convey.
Lines 286-297 – this material is important, but not clearly described. I think what you are trying to convey is that there was a second attempt to evict the CRAB park residents that had a different legal strategy. I’m not entirely clear what this new strategy was, however or how it relates to the national and international laws you describe.
Line 314 – The statement “but their relief was short lived” seems a bit odd in this context. As written it sounds like a follow-up lawsuit initiated by CRAB is what ultimately led to their eviction (i.e., their “relief” was ended by themselves, not others). If this is not correct, please clarify the role the follow-up lawsuit played in their ultimate eviction relative to noncompliance at the encampment and strain on park resources.
Line 325 – I suggest changing homeless people to unhoused in this instance
Line 346 – work in innovative ways to do what?
Line 358 – you are missing a zero on the end of 700,000.

Discussion

Line 384 – I’d suggest simplifying this to “the literature reviewed and case studies presented”. “and analysis” is distracting because its not clear what is being referred to.
Line 387 – I suggest changing “who the key actors are” to “who are the key actors” to be consistent with the prior question.
Line 389 – you can delete “for maximal benefit to better understanding”. It adds length and is not needed to make the point you are trying to make
Table 1: There are some problems with font size in this table (it looks like certain words the authors intended to emphasize are actually shown in smaller font, which is visually odd). Please review and modify as needed. Also, please left align or center text if possible. Right now, the table has large gaps between words because text has been justified rather than left aligned.
Table 1, CRAB park – what does “yet not maintaining it” mean in the first bullet of this section. Please clarify this. The second bullet in this section needs to be clarified. Right now it is very general (scale and scope of what?; what do you mean by jurisdictional elements?). In the third bullet, what is meant by multiple sectors of society? This section of the table is written much more generally than the first section, which makes it hard to connect your takeaways back to what actually happened at the site.
Table 1, Russian river – the point of bullet 1 isn’t clear. Is the intent to say that successful approaches can be simple, innovative and inexpensive? In point 2, its interesting that you emphasize flexibility in terms of spatial relocation of the sites because this was not mentioned in the narrative above. If its important enough to be in the table it should be mentioned in the case study. When reading this case I was intrigued by Riverkeeper’s decision to approach homeless through the lens of trauma-informed collaboration. This decision (and its success) seems like it should be mentioned in your table.
Line 399 – you indicate that the table highlights aspects and factors, but its not clear what is meant by this. How does an aspect differ from a factor? If there is no meaningful difference, just say factors. Also, it might be better to say “the cases presented here highlight several factors that warrant consideration in future empirical work”. This clarifies that you are looking to the future and allows you to delete the clause “Looking toward the future” from the subsequent sentence.
Line 410: consider changing, “and the first is restoration” to “the first of which is restoration”
Line 415: you can delete also from this sentence.
Line 420. Please don’t begin a sentence with And. You can just say “The second key term to pay attention to …”
Line 421 – please provide an indication of why this is important again here. Were different terms used in these different case studies and if so, how did that shape how unhoused people were treated?
Line 418 – Please considering flipping this sentence as follows: “Outlining the legal and regulatory context within which the case studies are situated will be essential to planning future work. Specifically, the working definitions of what constitutes unhoused, the laws and policies are associated with it, and what impacts they have on decision-making should be carefully considered.”

Conclusions

Line 441 – you are missing a period between “discussed” and “Second”.
Line 443 – delete “and drafting a grant proposal”. This may be your ultimate goal but is inappropriate here
Line 449 – delete “and” in front of “what law and policies”
Line 455-458 – consider flipping this sentence to make it more impactful: “Placing the relationships of unhoused people and waterways in context with existing theoretical frameworks for understanding change in the built environment, including posthumanism, political ecology, and capitalist urbanism, will be a critical area of future research”

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Please carefully review the entire manuscript for grammar and syntax. I've identified some (but not all) of the areas where language is unclear in my comments above.

Author Response

Comment 1:

Response: Wish to thank thew reviewer for these valuable comments.

Comment 2:

Consider changing “Working inductively, we conduct a scoping study that examines published literature, news stories, and some examples from the field, in order to provide some analysis about the intersections among waterway restoration and environmental justice, in connection with the interests of unhoused people.” to “Working inductively, we conduct a scoping study of published literature, news stories, and examples from the field, that explores the intersection of waterway restoration and environmental justice in the context of the interests of unhoused people.” The original sentence overuses “some” and makes your work sound overly tentative.

Response:

Thank you, these are great suggestions, and the changes were made.

Comment 3:

The last sentence of the abstract needs to be rewritten. It is inappropriate to begin it with And. Its also not clear what is meant by design guidance in this context. Design guidance for what? Response:

The final two sentences of the abstract were rewritten and that term was eliminated, and they now read as follows:

“Follow-on studies will center on clarifying the social dynamics in play, including identifying contested policy narratives, describing the regulatory context of the existing cases, definition(s) of what constitutes unhoused/homeless, and what impacts they have on decision-making. The future research we anticipate will develop information and propose strategies that can be used by practitioners including planners and landscape architects, in the process of organizing project work, to help advance environmental justice and human rights goals.

Comment 4: in the introduction

Line 51: Change “to help focus on” to “to understand”
Line 56-59: This statement seems vague. What do you mean by the range of elements that come into play? Are you unpacking the array of elements that influence how the interests of people experiencing homelessness are being addressed in waterways restoration projects? If so, perhaps just say that.
Consider changing the last sentence of the introduction to: Our formative study concludes with research recommendations in order to help guide future work on the processes of change that shape public spaces and waterways, and the opportunities they present for unhoused people.

Response:

These changes were made as suggested.

Comment 5: In methods and materials

General comments

The methods many different topics but those topics have not been defined using distinct headers, which makes it hard to parse. Consider separating the topics out with their own headers for increased readability. At a minimum, there should be:

a section describing why you chose to use the environmental justice framework (methods paragraphs 2),
a section about unhoused people (methods paragraph 3),
a section about what is presently known and what the research gap is (methods paragraph 4 and to some extent 5-9 – this could be reorganized so that what is known is presented first and then the research gap is defined…right now it’s the reverse), and
a section outlining your approach for addressing this gap (last two paragraphs).

Overall, there is a lot of literature review within your methods (particularly paragraphs 5-9) and its not indicated until after you present it that lit review was one of your methods. This makes the material you cover seem out of place (more like an extended introduction than methods). I recommend restructuring the methods section to address this issue. The subsections described above will help facilitate this.

Detail-level comments

Line 70-71: I’m not sure that this statement about the quality of Julian Fabos’ job is really important here. Perhaps reword to “over the decades, Julian Fabos has placed myriad practitioners in conversation with academics at the Fabos Conferences, the topic of this volume.

Response:

Considering these comments further, we realized that the re-organizing of the section with headers that you suggested as also an invitation to invert the order and get to the point about what methods we are using right away, so we did that. Headers are now present! We considered relocating everything to a different section but then ran into difficulties in making it stay consistent with the edits we were making in response to another reviewer’s comments so we opted to leave it as it for now (though if we were starting out with a subsequent manuscript, we would proceed differently).

We also saw that we need to include additional definition of inductively oriented work, so that has been added. The use of sub headers was accepted. Next, we explain more about the Fabos connection, which does seem necessary and relevant. Additional sentences were added to help clarify the connection. The paragraph below was added at the start of the Methods section.

“The approach used in this scoping study is inductive rather than deductive, making this work somewhat different in strategy and method than studies utilizing positivist frameworks and deductive analyses. The methods used in this preliminary study include several approaches that are grounded in social sciences and the humanities, and frequently used in the fields of landscape architecture, environmental studies, human geography, and similar disciplines. As explained by Swaffield and Demming (2011), all research methods manifest epistemological assumptions (objective, constructive, and subjective), as well as showing a relationship among research and theory (induction, abduction, and deduction); our work is primarily constructivist and subjective and uses inductive approaches to build inferences from the information we draw upon. For clarity, this methods section discusses not only our methods, but also the processes that we used to clarify the research questions we explored, as well as the research strategies involved. The background information included in this methods section helps clarify how we came to questions we ask going forward, and how we selected the methods we utilized.”

“Though it came as a surprise to us, the process of crafting the arguments in this manuscript continued, even as we reviewed and edited our work. Feedback from reviewers raised questions that helped us home in on exactly what we are arguing for, and this helped us to better understand what we are asserting, and why. The socratic process encouraged by these conferences, has multiple facets, and another was well-captured by Swaffield and Deming in their comprehensive article on research strategies: “the knowledge base of a professional discipline is this a continual process of transformation, as the tacit knowledge of a professional practice is encoded in scholarly work, and as research investigations and theoretical speculations are tested against practice,” (2011, p. 44).”

Comment set 6:

The sentence that begins on line 78 is largely redundant. Consider combining with the prior sentence or deleting.
Line 94-96: This sentence should end on “specifically in connection with unhoused people”. You can delete the rest of the sentence with no loss of content.
Line 116 – The sentence beginning “From our research…” is confusing. Perhaps rewrite more concisely as “This topic has not been addressed by other researchers”. Then instead of a semi colon, start a new sentence.
Line 117 – it is not sufficient to say that you used databases for searching for scholarly literature. We need to know what databases and what your search terms were in order for the work to be reproducible.
Line 120 – you can delete “in that connection”. Its not needed to convey your point.
Line 197 – please explicitly describe (1) the number of cases you considered and (2) the metrics you used to determine how much information was needed for a case to be presented here.

Response:

Each of these changes was made. Further text was added for elaboration, as cited below. Regarding the point about reproducible, that quality is not likely given the epistemological foundations of our approach. However, databases were enumerated.

“Of the eleven cases that we considered for inclusion in this paper, we concluded that we needed to have readily available and published information each of them, ideally work that was published in peer reviewed journals, in the press, or on websites of authoritative sources (e.g. governmental and/or nongovernmental organizations). This decision was made to help ensure that the information presented in this paper could be independently verified. Not included here were cases that we heard about primarily by word of mouth, for example, from practitioners who shared about project work that they were completing, or from unhoused people talking about difficulties they were facing.”

Comment set 7: in the results

Line 286-287 is a fragment. Please complete the thought this sentence was intended to convey.
Lines 286-297 – this material is important but not clearly described. I think what you are trying to convey is that there was a second attempt to evict the CRAB park residents that had a different legal strategy. I’m not entirely clear what this new strategy was, however or how it relates to the national and international laws you describe.
Line 314 – The statement “but their relief was short lived” seems a bit odd in this context. As written, it sounds like a follow-up lawsuit initiated by CRAB is what ultimately led to their eviction (i.e., their “relief” was ended by themselves, not others). If this is not correct, please clarify the role the follow-up lawsuit played in their ultimate eviction relative to noncompliance at the encampment and strain on park resources.
Line 325 – I suggest changing homeless people to unhoused in this instance
Line 346 – work in innovative ways to do what?
Line 358 – you are missing a zero on the end of 700,000.

Response:

Each of these was addressed in the manuscript.

Comment set 8: In the discussion

Line 384 – I’d suggest simplifying this to “the literature reviewed, and case studies presented”. “and analysis” is distracting because its not clear what is being referred to.
Line 387 – I suggest changing “who the key actors are” to “who are the key actors” to be consistent with the prior question.
Line 389 – you can delete “for maximal benefit to better understanding”. It adds length and is not needed to make the point you are trying to make
Table 1: There are some problems with font size in this table (it looks like certain words the authors intended to emphasize are actually shown in smaller font, which is visually odd). Please review and modify as needed. Also, please left align or center text if possible. Right now, the table has large gaps between words because text has been justified rather than left aligned.
Table 1, CRAB park – what does “yet not maintaining it” mean in the first bullet of this section. Please clarify this. The second bullet in this section needs to be clarified. Right now it is very general (scale and scope of what? What do you mean by jurisdictional elements?). In the third bullet, what is meant by multiple sectors of society? This section of the table is written much more generally than the first section, which makes it hard to connect your takeaways back to what actually happened at the site.
Table 1, Russian river – the point of bullet 1 isn’t clear. Is the intent to say that successful approaches can be simple, innovative and inexpensive? In point 2, its interesting that you emphasize flexibility in terms of spatial relocation of the sites because this was not mentioned in the narrative above. If its important enough to be in the table it should be mentioned in the case study. When reading this case I was intrigued by Riverkeeper’s decision to approach homeless through the lens of trauma-informed collaboration. This decision (and its success) seems like it should be mentioned in your table.
Line 399 – you indicate that the table highlights aspects and factors, but its not clear what is meant by this. How does an aspect differ from a factor? If there is no meaningful difference, just say factors. Also, it might be better to say “the cases presented here highlight several factors that warrant consideration in future empirical work”. This clarifies that you are looking to the future and allows you to delete the clause “Looking toward the future” from the subsequent sentence.
Line 410: consider changing, “and the first is restoration” to “the first of which is restoration”
Line 415: you can delete also from this sentence.
Line 420. Please don’t begin a sentence with And. You can just say “The second key term to pay attention to …”
Line 421 – please provide an indication of why this is important again here. Were different terms used in these different case studies and if so, how did that shape how unhoused people were treated?
Line 418 – Please considering flipping this sentence as follows: “Outlining the legal and regulatory context within which the case studies are situated will be essential to planning future work. Specifically, the working definitions of what constitutes unhoused, the laws and policies are associated with it, and what impacts they have on decision-making should be carefully considered.”

Response:

Each of these was addressed in the manuscript.

Comment set 9: in the conclusions

Line 441 – you are missing a period between “discussed” and “Second”.
Line 443 – delete “and drafting a grant proposal”. This may be your ultimate goal but is inappropriate here
Line 449 – delete “and” in front of “what law and policies”
Line 455-458 – consider flipping this sentence to make it more impactful: “Placing the relationships of unhoused people and waterways in context with existing theoretical frameworks for understanding change in the built environment, including posthumanism, political ecology, and capitalist urbanism, will be a critical area of future research”

Response:

All suggested changes were made though we do need to mention the grant proposal because planning for future work is a core accomplishment of this paper. On further reflection, your concern may be with the pecuniary implications of the term ‘grant proposal,’ so we changed it to ‘research proposal.’.

Comment 10:

Please carefully review the entire manuscript for grammar and syntax. I've identified some (but not all) of the areas where language is unclear in my comments above.

Response:

The language of the paper was adjusted for grammar and syntax; the original tone likely reflected its origins as a conference paper.

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper addresses a very interesting and timely topic about waterway restoration, environmental justice, and the rights of unhoused people. The subject is original and has clear potential to make a contribution both to academic debate and to practice. However, in my view, the manuscript would benefit from further development and strengthening.

Abstract: In my view, the space given to future perspectives in the abstract should be reduced.

Introduction.

In my opinion, the introduction should be expanded, as it currently appears somewhat too concise. Certain aspects could receive more attention and space. For example, it would be useful to explain why waterway restoration has become so central in contemporary urban and environmental policies. Moreover, given the topic, I would expect to find a definition of the concept of social justice and perhaps a brief reference to its evolution. In addition, while the paper refers to a marginalized group, it does not provide the reader with a concise overview of why their presence along waterways is significant, nor does it clarify whether this consideration is specific to the United States context. Finally, the paper does explain which knowledge gap it aims to address, but perhaps in addition to stating that “there are no studies on unhoused people in this context,” it could also show how the existing literature on green/blueways or on homelessness and public space engages with—or neglects—certain aspects. Even though some of these elements appear later in the paper, it would be preferable to anticipate them briefly in the introduction.

Method.

In my view, the methodology is not sufficiently explained. Large parts of this section are dedicated to theoretical and normative frameworks (Fabos, Xiang, principles of environmental justice, UN rights, definitions of unhoused). These contents are relevant, but they shift the focus away from the operational description of how the study was carried out.

It is stated that scholarly databases, media, popular press, social media, and personal networks were consulted. However, there is no quantification (how many articles, how many news reports, how many sources in total). Furthermore, it is not explained how these materials were selected: with which keywords, within what time frame, and according to what inclusion or exclusion criteria.

The same problem applies to the selected case studies. The sole mention of “nearly a dozen examples” (lines 182–183) is vague; in addition, the criteria for selection are not clarified (e.g., geography, type of waterway, scale of the project).

Furthermore, it is not specified whether the cases are located only in the United States or also elsewhere, what types of waterways are involved, or the scale of the projects. Even though this becomes clearer later in the results section, such information should have been explicitly stated in the methods section.

For example, in lines 182–186 it is mentioned that the cases were “listed for further consideration” and that sources included media and social media, but there is no explanation of how these materials were analyzed. A description of techniques or procedures (e.g., thematic analysis, coding categories, case comparison) is missing, making the approach hardly replicable.

It is also not clear whether a common analytical framework was applied across different types of cases (academic, journalistic, and other sources). Without such clarification, the comparability of findings remains uncertain.

I suggest the authors to provide more detail on their data collection and analysis procedures.

Results:

3.1. There is a lack of data (such as field observations, testimonies, or other forms of evidence) and, more generally, of an analysis of how and to what extent the park is actually used by unhoused people. No interviews, surveys, or specific reports on the role of unhoused people in this area are cited. As a result, the conclusion that “this case provides an alternative model” appears asserted rather than demonstrated. The analysis reads more as a description of the park and its touristic function than as a critical examination of environmental justice dynamics.

In general: I don’t understand why in the methods section (lines 182–183) it is stated that “nearly a dozen examples” were identified, but in the results and discussion sections only three are actually developed. It is not explained why these three were selected: were they the most documented, the most representative, or simply the ones for which more sources were available? Clarifying this choice would be usefull.

Discussion:
The table 1 helps to summarize the cases, but it remains descriptive and does not support a real comparative analysis. The paper tends to remain at a descriptive level and does not sufficiently develop comparison and analysis, even in this section where it should.

Moreover, I wonder: where is social/environmental justice really addressed? In the introduction, social and environmental justice is invoked as the theoretical framework of reference. In the discussion, however, the term “environmental justice” is hardly mentioned. Authors should implement this aspect.

Conclusions:
The conclusions should be strengthened. At the moment they mainly reiterate that the study has two contributions (outlining social/institutional dynamics and providing factors for future studies), without offering a critical reflection on the implications, limitations, and potential impact of the research. This section could be reinforced by including these aspects.

Author Response

Comment 1.This paper addresses a very interesting and timely topic about waterway restoration, environmental justice, and the rights of unhoused people. The subject is original and has clear potential to make a contribution both to academic debate and to practice. However, in my view, the manuscript would benefit from further development and strengthening.

Abstract: In my view, the space given to future perspectives in the abstract should be reduced.

Response:

The manuscript was further developed and strengthened, and its aims, goals, and underlying philosophy were clarified. This was done in dialogue with authors writing on research methods in landscape architecture. The attention to future work has been clarified.

To clarify, this paper, a scoping study, was presented at the Fabos Conference in April. It is not a typical research paper, but rather presents our accomplishments to date, and makes the case for further research. For those reasons, it is too soon to present some of the things you are looking for (additional depth, more developed literature review, etc.); those elements will be addressed in the future grant-funded work, to be completed with graduate student collaborators. Additional content has been added to emphasize that, as noted below.

Comment 2: on the introduction

Response:

The Introduction was expanded to include more background on why waterway restoration has become central in contemporary urban and environmental policies. Language was adjusted so the introduction includes some attention to the elements that come later. Several paragraphs and sentences added follow below.

“The term ‘social justice’ is commonly used by scholars to refer to the aggregate sense of fairness in a society, and specifically, “…justice is a central moral standard that requires the fair and impartial treatment of all. Social justice differs from other realms of justice, such as that relating to the application of law, being centrally concerned with the fairness of a social order and its attendant distributions of rewards and costs. Determining how fairness is to be assessed, and according to which principle, is an issue of fierce debate. Different criteria, including equality, entitlement, recognition or need, yield different principles of justice,” (Gregory et al. 2014).”

(p. 713, the full citation is: Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt, G., Watts, M., & Whatmore, S. (eds.). (2011). The dictionary of human geography. John Wiley & Sons.)

“Waterway restoration has become more central in contemporary urban and environmental policies due to both societal and legal factors (Smardon, Moran, and Baptiste 2018). Most cities are co-located with waterways of some kind (streams, rivers, coastal waterfronts, etc.), and people increasingly prefer urban environments that include greenways and blueways (Zingraf-Hamed et al. 2017). Because older ideas about urbanization have dominated thinking about urban form, people often assume that cities are the antithesis of nature, yet technological change and environmental advocacy have shown that alternatives are possible, and that renaturalization projects can be successful (Platjouw 2019). Legal factors are significant, too: laws and policies have changed to encourage more responsibility, on the part of both governments as well as private entities, to do less harm, and to create more benefits, and environmental policies can be found at all levels of government from local to national, globally; similarly, land use law has also evolved help foster more pro-environmental practices (Thomas 2024). However, in older cities, disinvestment and economic change often act in ways that limit progress toward greener infrastructure and more sustainable environments; nonetheless, there are programs and policies that direct both private and public funds toward waterway restoration, in specific conditions and contexts (Matsler 2021).”

Smardon, R., Moran, S., & Baptiste, A. K. (2018). Revitalizing urban waterway communities: Streams of environmental justice. Routledge.

Zingraff-Hamed, A., Greulich, S., Wantzen, K. M., & Pauleit, S. (2017). Societal drivers of European water governance: A comparison of urban river restoration practices in France and Germany. Water, 9(3), 206.

Platjouw, F. M. (2019). The green financing of ecosystem restoration. In Ecological Restoration Law (pp. 142-164). Routledge.

Thomas, C. C., Huber, C., Skrabis, K. E., & Hoelzle, T. B. (2024). A framework for estimating economic impacts of ecological restoration. Environmental Management, 74(6), 1239-1259.

Matsler, A. M., Meerow, S., Mell, I. C., & Pavao-Zuckerman, M. A. (2021). A ‘green’ chameleon: Exploring the many disciplinary definitions, goals, and forms of “green infrastructure”. Landscape and Urban Planning, 214, 104145.

“The knowledge gaps that we plan to explore lie at the margins of the existing literature, and they center on the relationships among unhoused people and blueways, and this includes information on use patterns as well as the framing of the problem, and the range of policy narratives about it (Lakoff 2014). Addressing this gap will bring forward more clarity about the contested nature public space, the use value of waterways, and the legitimacy of unhoused people existing in public space, among other things.”

Lakoff, G. (2014). The all new don't think of an elephant!: Know your values and frame the debate. Chelsea Green Publishing.

Comment 3: on the method

In my view, the methodology is not sufficiently explained. Large parts of this section are dedicated to theoretical and normative frameworks (Fabos, Xiang, principles of environmental justice, UN rights, definitions of unhoused). These contents are relevant, but they shift the focus away from the operational description of how the study was carried out.

The methodology section was redrafted, and its focus is now more clearly presented. As noted above, this paper does not use the methodologies that the reviewer anticipates. Several clarifying sentences were added to help all readers understand: the approach used in this manuscript, the importance of future work, and the need for methodological breadth, especially concerning a topic that has epistemological challenges built into it.

Comment 4:

I suggest the authors to provide more detail on their data collection and analysis procedures.

Response:

Specifics about methods have been added, with reference to leading authors in the field, as discussed above. In addition, more detail was added about the types of information the authors utilized in developing the manuscript. The now more explicit discussion of philosophy and research methods also addresses these concerns.

Comment 5: on results and discussion

Response:

The manuscript presents a scoping study, and it is not our final and comprehensive work on the topic. The text has been edited in several ways to address the reviewer’s comments, primarily by restating the focus of this work and distinguishing what is presented here from what is intended with our future work. The number close to a dozen was specified, and detail on the selection process was provided (see paragraph following below).

The table was created to display information and not to conduct a comparative analysis, and the language was edited to help head off any misunderstandings. A sentence was added to clarify the environmental justice connection, and yet also avoid the pitfall of rehashing our earlier work.

“We considered many examples that could be used for discussion in this scoping paper, and in order to be included, the cases needed to show something notable taking place, relative to our topical focus. It was important that the case have a sufficient amount of source material to allow us to get a clear picture of what had transpired at that location. Of the eleven cases that we considered for inclusion in this paper, we concluded that we needed to have readily available and published information each of them, ideally work that was published in peer reviewed journals, in the press, or on websites of authoritative sources (e.g. governmental and/or nongovernmental organizations). This decision was made to help ensure that the information presented in this paper could be independently verified. Not included here were cases that we heard about primarily by word of mouth, for example, from practitioners who shared about project work that they were completing, or from unhoused people talking about difficulties they were facing. As a limitation, we note our process for identifying case studies was restricted to English language source materials; we note that this scoping study uses secondary source materials, since we do not yet have resources for primary source data collection using field investigations.’

“As noted earlier in the discussion of the principles of environmental justice, and whether they are being realized or not in any given waterway location, requires empirical work that examines whether unhoused people’s rights to self-determination and access are being realized or not.”

Comment 6:

The conclusions should be strengthened. At the moment they mainly reiterate that the study has two contributions (outlining social/institutional dynamics and providing factors for future studies), without offering a critical reflection on the implications, limitations, and potential impact of the research. This section could be reinforced by including these aspects Response:

Language was added and adjusted to address these concerns. In addition, a piece was added to the introduction, in order to help head off concerns about what is presented in the conclusion.

“By design guidance, we mean the array of materials such as textbooks, topical handbooks, and research studies, that help landscape architects in grappling with the design challenges presented by clients, and the range of ways they can engage with those challenges to plan and organize project work (e.g., Prominski 2016; Marcus and Francis 1997) in ways that are effective and mediate in favor of social justice. Handling projects involving the interests of unhoused people can involve challenges to a practitioner’s professional ethics (Pable & McLane 2021), and for that reason, providing ways of addressing that (French 2023; Por 2014; Giamarino 2023) will be important to future research.”

Prominski, M. (2016). Design guidelines. In Research in landscape architecture (pp. 194-208). Routledge.

Marcus, C. C., & Francis, C. (Eds.). (1997). People places: design guidelines for urban open space. John Wiley & Sons.

Pable, J., & McLane, Y. (2021). Design considerations. In Homelessness and the built environment (pp. 138-167). Routledge.

French, M. (2023). Inclusive Park Design for People of All Housing Statuses: Tools for Restoring Unhoused Individuals’ Rights in Public Parks . UCLA: The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1f1619sk

Por, B. A. (2014). The Tent City as a Place of Power: Homeless Political Actors and the Making of “Public Space.” McGill University, Dissertations and Theses (Canada).

Giamarino, C. D. (2023). Planning ‘just’ public space: Reimagining hostile designs through do-it-yourself urban design tactics by unhoused communities in Los Angeles. University of California, Dissertations and Theses, Los Angeles, California.

“Another important strategy going forward will be using research methods that engage unhoused people directly, including for example photovoice and participatory action research (Armijo 2002; Mathers et al. 2011; Thwaites 2011)

Armijo, L. M. (2002). The search for space and dignity: using participatory action research to explore boundary management among homeless individuals. Arizona State University.

Mathers, A. R., Thwaites, K., Simkins, I. M., & Mallett, R. (2011). Beyond Participation: The practical application of an empowerment process to bring about environmental and social change. Développement Humain, Handicap et Changement Social, 19(3), 37-57.

Thwaites, K. (2011). Towards socially restorative urbanism: Exploring social and spatial implications for urban restorative experience. Landscape Review, 13(2).

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revised manuscript demonstrates significant improvement and directly addresses the reviewers’ previous comments in a thoughtful and systematic way. The authors have expanded the introduction, clarified the theoretical framing, and provided a more transparent discussion of their methodological approach and case selection process. The revisions have clarified that this is exploratory work intended to identify research gaps and guide future empirical studies, rather than to present definitive results — an appropriate scope for this type of paper.

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

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of land-3745718

The authors review case studies of waterways restoration and how restoration influences environmental justice and the interests of unhoused people. I feel that this research topic is incredibly important but that the research itself needs to be fleshed out more fully before being submitted for publication. Right now the manuscript reads like a description of three case studies with minimal synthesis. This makes it hard to identify key themes and takeaways. It is not presently clear how many studies were evaluated to inform the content of this article as descriptive statistics/narrative themes for the other case studies the authors reviewed are not described. Given the above, I recommend rejecting this paper in its present form with the opportunity to resubmit should these issues be addressed.

I have provided detail-level comments on each main section of the manuscript below

Introduction

Line 42 – You can delete “both”, which is implied by the use of simultaneously
Line 52 – I recommend deleting help in front of show
Line 60 – Its not clear what is meant by “the processes of change regarding the unhoused”. Please clarify.

Literature Review

Line 68 -70 – this sentence is not clear. I’m not sure what “can relate to achieving” means. Please reword. I also suggest making the callout to the table its own separate sentence and change from Figure 1 to Table 1.
Line 70-74 –There are really two future directions indicated here, but that wasn’t clear to me when I first read the sentence. (1) you indicate that it is important to expand the scope of waterways restoration projects presently considered in an EJ context (i.e., to look beyond stream restoration, the focus of table 1) and (2) you indicate that it is important to explicitly consider the unhoused in EJ assessments for such projects. I recommend restructuring this sentence to state these objectives more explicitly.
Table 1 is a bit fuzzy, please provide a higher resolution version of the table. It would help to provide more details in the relationship to stream restoration column. For instance, I’m not sure what is meant by “the phrase free from ecological destruction relates to quality improvements”. Do you mean water quality? Something else? I’m also not sure that it is correct to say that the interpretation of the second two principles (2, 3) is the same with respect to stream restoration, which seems to be indicated here. Providing examples in a third column might add clarity.
The caption of Figure 1 should be modified to indicate that it only refers to stream restoration. It should also be Table 1, not Figure 1.
Lines 78-81. This could be split into 2 or even 3 sentences to improve clarity
Line 82-85. Its not clear what “likewise, the term experiencing homelessness” is referring to. Is it preferred like unhoused or not preferred like homeless? I recommend deleting the clause entirely.
Figure 2 – I like this image, but its not clear where these terms came from. Is this the result of a literature review? Something else? I also wonder if gendering the unhoused person in the image is appropriate. Perhaps that could be left ambiguous instead?
Line 88 – consider changing “one important” to “an important”
Line 89 – consider deleting homeless people and just use unhoused like you have previously. Also consider changing “from our research on the subject” to “This subject”
Line 90 – you can remove “yet” after researchers.
Line 99 – “Worth noting is” should be changed to “It is worth noting”
Line 106 – change urging to urge
Line 107 – delete “of” before “human rights”
Line 108 – The way this is written makes it sound like you wrote the opening statement of the United Nations Human Rights to Water and Sanitation. If true, that’s fine. If not, please repair the grammar here.
Line 115-118. Please split this into two sentences. The second sentence starts at “Still”.

Methods

Line 134 – you don’t need to redefine unhoused here. Please also split this into two sentences. The second sentence begins with “The first method we used…”
Line 135 – its not clear what is meant by “where there was something notable taking place”. Given that this is a methods section, please be specific about your approach.
Line 141 – consider deleting the “And” and the start of the sentence and beginning with “As”.
Line 146-147 – this sentence is vague and a repeat of the sentence that began the last paragraph
This section should indicate the exact number of cases you reviewed, what the criteria for acceptance were (more detail required than “something notable”) and the number of cases that were rejected for different reasons (e.g., 10 because they were complex and required reviewing > 12 reports, etc.). On that note, I’ve never heard of something being omitted because it had too much pertinent information available. Wouldn’t those be the best cases to explore for this? Please explain that decision further.

Results

Line 159-160 – I’m not sure what this sentence means. Please open with a sentence that reminds the reader what this is all about (e.g., the XX case studies we reviewed addressing the environmental justice implications of waterways restoration for the unhoused revealed what important takeaways?). Then indicate that you will describe three of the case studies you reviewed in detail that illustrate these takeaways.
Line 181-192 – this paragraph uses homeless instead of unhoused. Please be consistent to the extent you can be.
Section 4.1 – do any of these case studies include information about use of the restored sites by unhoused persons? How extensively are they used, how are they viewed by those individuals and how is that tracked? This restoration is being touted as a success story relative to the unhoused, but I’m not seeing clear evidence that is the case.
Line 207-210 – Its not clear how the outcome was negative for unhoused people from the text – perhaps indicate that the negative outcome will be described in detail below to make it clear that the information is forthcoming
Line 212 – you can delete the comma after 1987
The text in figure 4 is not legible and the image is blurry. Please replace with a higher resolution image

Discussion

I would have expected to see a comparative assessment of the different cases here (perhaps with some of the recurrent themes across cases being addressed)
The discussion is pretty thin and much of the first two paragraphs recap the why. I recommend cutting everything up to line 322 and elaborating more about what you found and why its important.
Lines 324-330 – I can see that this is an important future direction but its not clear to me how/why the work you’ve done here suggest it should be. It would be helpful to connect this idea back to your results more clearly. What about the case studies you presented makes you feel this is a particularly important next step?
Line 332-341. This is another great paragraph, but its not clear how this emerged from your prior study. I think you could say that the case studies you looked at included a variety of different types of restoration projects, which makes defining what qualifies important. Honestly, I’d be very interested in hearing about the number of different types of restoration projects you found. That’s something that should be part of your results (prior to diving into the case studies).

Conclusion

Lines 354-355 – I’m not sure that you can claim the study does this unless you provide some overview statistics of what the cases you reviewed say. You gave a detailed description of 3, but presumably you have information on many more that could enrich your results and lend weight to this conclusion. You don’t need to describe them in detail, but summarizing the social and institutional dynamics across case studies seems important.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There are many grammar and syntactic errors in the manuscript that need to be corrected. I have drawn attention to some of these in my review above, but not all.

There is also a tendency towards run-on sentences and overly long sentences that have colons/semicolons and several clauses. Separating out ideas and simplifying your sentences will help clarify your ideas

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The review comments can be found in the attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf