How Attractive for Walking Are the Main Streets of a Shrinking City?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors!

I read the manuscript with great interest. Understanding transport - land use nexus, especially in microscale seems to be crucial to recognize sustainable mobility issues. Generally, I consider the manuscript well prepared and worth to publish, however, I have some remarks:

1) As far as the link between walkability and the shrinking city is explained correctly the interaction between the industrial city and shrinking remains unclear exactly. Ostrava is probably shrinking city because it is or was an industrial city. Shrinkage is in huge part a result extensive socialist (over)industrialisation and capitalist 'restructuration'. These are not parallel phenomena (line 66: industrial and shrinking city). I suppose that the features of post socialists industrial city such as income level, unemployment rate, investment level and structure may be of greater importance for shaping the mobility of residents than city spatial structure or air quality. 

2) The main objective should describe a bit more precisely. What research questions are especially important or interesting? 

3) I suggest adding the Materials and Methods chapter including the general outline of the questionnaire, short socio-demographic characteristics of the sample (I know that it is a purposive sample but the degree of likelihood between sample and population is important to understand the results). Short information about the details of direct observation also should be useful. What are the pros and cons of all the methods? It is possible to use the information contained in lines 173-185 and in appendix A.

4) Wich kind of results are more inserting - descriptive statistics or explanations (correlation)? The most important outcomes should be present in the form of a table or figure. Maybe there is a way to use a bit more sophisticated method of exploration of the survey outcomes (correspondence analysis, regression model)? 

5) Figure 4: the upper left picture contains yellow dots while they are not shown on any other picture. What is this category of activity?

6) Figure 5: why you didn't use the same method as in Figure 4? What does the high or low presence mean?

7) I really appreciate that you try to discuss the results with the outcomes of other case studies but sometimes it looks like quite accidentally - it is discussing to use Asian or American cities as reference points. 

8) You address part of the outcomes to urban policy. Readers who are not familiar with the financial and political conditions of local authorities in the Czech Republic may have difficulty assessing who these comments are addressed to (national and local authorities) and why the problems indicated in the text have not yet been resolved.

Regards

Reviewer

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Very interesting research. Well designed and argued. The bibliography is extensive and correctly used. Very interesting maps too. It would be good to introduce a location map of Ostrava with respect to the country's urban system. As well as proposing a future research agenda regarding the valuation of local politicians and business and business owners. A final reflection could also be interesting to contextualize the results of the research on new urban mobility and the green economy, as well as on the impacts of the post-Covid-19 pandemic on the city.
I support its publication.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Your article presents an interesting case for the correlation of unsustainable urban development trends and policies (socio-economic and spatial) and walkability conditions. 

I would like to invite you to address the following comments and suggestions, which I believe can improve the impact of your paper:

1. Page 2 (2. Walkable main streets). Could you please explain further, based on the literature that you provide, why a walkable street needs to be attractive to upper-middle classes? This question stems from the position that walking is a socially inclusive transport mean due to the low personal cost, the absence of special skills required by the user (e.g. driving licence) and the low external costs.
2. Page 3 (2. Walkable main streets). You indicate that the banning of private cars in combination with the promotion of walking in some cases was successful in reviving main streets, while in other cases the commercial activity declined. Then, you argue that the main reason for the decline in main streets is the change of shopping and living trends. However, this change is a general observation that characterizes consumer habits is large parts of the globalised world. Thus, it cannot suffice as a reason for the failure of some schemes in comparison to the success of others. Could you justify the reason for failure or the criterion for success that usually distinguishes the different cases? I think that the answer is in the lines of the following paragraphs of the text, but it is not evident to the reader under the current structure. Maybe you should consider a slight reorganization of the structure.
3. Page 5 (3. Study site) and Appendix A. How is the sample size justified?
4. Page 5 (3. Study site). Please consider giving a summary of some basic information about the sample composition of Appendix B within the description of the study area or in the preliminary part of 4. Results.
5. Page 5 (3. Study site). What is the position of the selected streets in the service of walk-through trips? Table 1, for example, suggests that Stodolni Street possibly leads to an attractive destination (?) somewhere else in the city.
6. Page 6 (4. Results). Regarding the purpose of the trip, was there a possibility for the respondent to choose a combined purpose (e.g. walk through and work, or work and shopping)? Or was the question about the main (single) purpose of trip? Please clarify in text.
7. Page 6 (Table 1). The visit purposes, frequencies and modes could be correlated as well. E.g. if purpose is education, it could be expected to have frequent workday trips by using public transport and foot along Nadrazni Street.
8. Page 11 (5. Discussion). The decline of the city’s population in the period 1991-2018 is 20%, while in 3. Study site a decrease of 14% is mentioned since 1990. Please clarify.
9. Page 11 (5. Discussion). The comparisons with other cities and average values in the world is somewhat out of context, without providing any other information on the similarities or differences with the study area or their features of particular importance to the scope of the paper.

Thank you in advance for addressing the above remarks.

 

Author Response

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