A Methodological Approach for Evaluating Brownfield Redevelopment Projects

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is well structured. The focus of the research is well explained and the problem discussed is well clarified. The reference literature is extensive and its analysis is effective. However, the section on stakeolders needs more development because it is considered a bit weak. Stakeholders are classified in terms of the phase in which they are involved but no mention is made of the different impact that each type can have on the project. What are the contributions of each type and how can they be calibrated? What are the priority issues? Another problem that is not mentioned: what are the methods for collecting the various stakeholders' issues? What are the interaction systems that allow an effective collection of information by each type? Interviews? Brainstorming?

In conclusion it is believed that the research work is very interesting and promising. In future developments, the structuring of a specific case study to validate the effectiveness of the methodological approach proposed may be useful.

Author Response

Thank you for your contribution and your ideas

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments

The paper in general is interesting but some sections present some problems.

 Specific comments for sections

In the section Introduction the authors introduce the objectives well.

·         In the section “2. Awareness of brownfield rehabilitation” introduces the framework of the theme that the authors will develop in the paper.

·         In the section “3. Scope of the Study” introduces well the purpose of the work that the authors will develop in the paper in the context of the reference framework.

·         In the sub-section “3.1. Stakeholder input into decision-making "the authors underline the importance and the different points of view different territorial actors in the brownfield redevelopment project choices.

·         The section “4. Proposed Methodological Approach "has a sufficiently clear structure, but I underlin that the authors, despite having declared in this section that they would use the G.I.S. for the multi criteria and project objectives analysis, in reality, they have never shown any elaboration in G.I.S.

·         Furthermore, the authors do not distinguish the criteria from the indicators.

·         In the sub-section “4.1. Stakeholder Identification (first step) "the authors identify at line 273 seven stakeholder groups, then at line 280 they refer to eight stakeholder groups. There is some little confusion.

·         In the sub-section "4.2. Identification of Dimensions and Thematic Fields and Identification of Indicators in their Dimensions (second step)”, the authors should have reported to list of 21 selected articles. In fact, it is not clear whether the 21 selected articles are present in the bibliography, and therefore it would be enough to insert a list of the case studies proposed in these articles and the relative bibliographical reference.

Other critical issues present in this sub-section:

1.      Does the first column of table 3 represent the bibliographic reference in which the "Thematic field" was found for the three sustainability dimensions considered? The authors should clarify this point.

2.      The authors should clarify the relationship between the 21 selected articles and LEED-ND [14], BREEAM Communities 314 [15], CASBEE-UD, SBTool [43] and Green Star [18].

3.      On lines 323- 325 the authors report “To identify and classify the most relevant indicators in brownfield redevelopment projects, the Geographical Information System (GIS) and multi-criteria analysis for the prioritization of indicators”, but no G.I.S. is present in the paper, at this point the use of GIS for the identification of indicators is not clear.

4.      Authors should provide more information on how weights were determined; if they have used the measured frequency of these indicators in the 21 selected articles, the authors are advised to provide a table that highlights the results of this analysis as they did in Table 3.

·         In the sub-section “5.2. Integration of Indicators into Dimensions” there are other critical issues:

1.      At line 390 the authors reports "Compare themes with our study to identify those with the similar direction (scale, context, etc.)" to which case study do they refer? They never specified the case study, only that of browfield near neighbourhood.

2.      The authors intend as actions those present in the first column of table 8, then it would be more correct to call them as actions in the specific Thematic Field and no Thematic Field.

3.      In reality, the actions proposed by the authors represent the objectives of sustainable development for the case study addressed by them but not stated in the paper. At this point the authors should clarify what the actions considered are.

4.      Assuming that the case study analysed by the authors to highlight the efficacy of their methodological approach is that related to the neighborhoods near a brownfield and that all that highlighted above has no problem, in fact, the authors in table 8 have only highlighted the relationships between the objectives / actions and the indicators, but the analysis did not highlight their relationships with the decision makers and in particular in the framework of the Life Cycle Project, points that they had highlighted in the methodological approach.

·         The authors did not highlight the results which they achieved

·         The authors propose two Conclusion sections, which appear to be redundant.

In the two sections “6. Conclusions” and “7. Conclusions and Future Work” the authors do not comment on the results they have received based on the proposed methodological approach and in relation to the case analysed. In fact, they have only emphasized the importance of an approach capable of providing a framework for assessing sustainability, which is an acceptable element, but is incomplete because the paper has some critical issues that will have to be eliminated.

Author Response

Thank you for your contribution and your ideas

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The study develops a tool and a methodological framework for evaluating and supporting brownfield redevelopment. While the article is well developed and of interests, I find the main weakness of this paper is that its literature review parts choose to ignore a chunky scholarly works in urban planning and design development tools/methods developed for urban redevelopment and other purposes. The few tools discussed include from literature number 14-17—most are government institutional tools rather than scholarly works. These tools are inherently focused on ease-of-use rather than depth and comprehensiveness of the capability. Without such a review, it is hard to evaluate the originality and contribution of this paper to the academia. There are several planning/design support tools or methods developed in this regard and the authors need to discuss how they improve and contribute from current academic practices:

Small town sustainable development planning tools:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12061-019-09296-5

Urban regeneration planning tools:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01944360008976083?casa_token=gMlorzKynPwAAAAA:6padOz-ypd6jK243DXpbees35-CW1-vwkCBR73lSrrk4WvwokVXQjJFEiclDAWm-_2dK6V7VHZyZ

Geodesign tools (which attract many recent discussions for small scale sustainable development):

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670716300695

Detailed comments:

Line 12: The first sentence in the abstract is very broad and general while lacking in focus to engage the readers into the following discussions.

Line 47: The “recent” discussion uses a paper more than 15 years ago to support. Brownfield redevelopment attracts a significant academic focus. Rather trying to prove “negligence” here, I suggest the authors to more directly clarify how their tools contribute the current academic discussions and studies.

Line 93: This is a very important paragraph but it is under-developed and lacks in academic works to support.  

Line 148: I suggest integrate this part into introduction, because many concepts have been repetitive.

Line 176: Again, this part does not read like belongs to “scope of study”, while more fitted in the introduction or literature review.

Figure 1: At 100% zoom the texts in the figure is hard to read. Please consider simplifying the texts and increase the letter sizes on for boxes on the left.

Line 313: Again, for academic publications it is important to show your engagement in the previous academic works, not just practical documents. For example:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652616002547

Figure 2: I do not see the values of using figures developed by previous works. Some texts descriptions in very concise way would be fine.

Table 8: I suggest the contents to be categorized into environmental/social/economic dimensions like previous developments. Now it is very long and readers can lose their track of the structure without proper grouping.

Line 428: I do not like straightforward equaling redevelopment with sustainable outcomes, because there are other evidence suggesting otherwise:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X19301682

I do not think the evidence dis-qualifies this work, but the authors need to have a more comprehensive discussion and explore evidences from more aspects.

Line 474: Conclusions appear in heading before and the repetitive is confusing. I suggest changing the previous section headings to “discussions”.

Author Response

Thank you for your contribution and ideas

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round  2

Reviewer 2 Report

The revised paper has improved, the authors have solved many of the previously highlighted critical issues, but there are still problems that I highlighted in the attached PDF file.

They mainly concern the following points:

In the Cover letter they wrote to me that they don't have a case study, so why do I find this period, "An earlier work focused on the use of sustainability of cities in a case study on the metropolitan area of Thessaloniki in Greece". Then I don't understand what they represented in Figure 2. This figure is characterised by:

absence of a legenda in the Figure 2; 

 no location for the case study shown in Figure 2, which should be that of the metropolitan area of Thessaloniki in Greece.

considerable confusion at the end of the sub-section 3.1 at lines 419-423, because the actions are not those reported in table 9, in which the authors identify “Table 9. Positioning of stakeholders 454 groups in the dimensions and life cycle a project”, but those present in Table 10.

A reading from section 3 to section 4 is recommended, because the paper in these sections is not clear for the reasons mentioned above.

The authors must clarify whether they actually have a case study and if so, clarify if it is what they represent in Figure 2, otherwise it is not clear what they represented in Figure 2.

Despite this, if the authors solve these problems, the paper can be considered potentially for publication.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The authors thank the reviewer for his comments to the article and for the contributions to its improvement

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The revision addressed reviewer concerns and thus can be published. 

Author Response

The authors thank the reviewer for his comments to the article and for the contributions to its improvement