Cities4ZERO: Overcoming Carbon Lock-in in Municipalities through Smart Urban Transformation Processes
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I like your paper. The phenomenon in developed countries shows the position of perfecting urban planning for the future. This study shows the future leap desired by urban planners, environmental issues and city comfort become an important part in urban planning and development planning.
But I don't see a comparison of the conditions of the 5 cities that are the object of your research. I ask that you include it in this paper:
1. Comparison of environmental conditions in five cities. What is the problem with their environment? What are the negative effects?
2. Why did the five cities become the object of your research? What are the economic and social conditions? How many population and area does it have to be worth comparing?
3. Social and environmental issues become very important to be discussed, moreover, there is the problem of the COVID-19 outbreak that occurred in European countries. I want you to mention this, especially in the discussion.
Qualitative analysis needs to be made quantitative in order to provide a definitive assessment of the phenomena, impacts and other things that need to be prepared in the future.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
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Reviewer 2 Report
Cities4ZERO: Overcoming Carbon Lock-in in Municipalities through Smart Urban Transformation Processes
Overview
This paper examines the possibility of integrating diverse perspectives in low carbon actions for cities. It introduces a method, entitled “Cities4ZERO”, which is a step-by-step methodology to guide local authorities through the process of developing plans and projects for an effective urban transition. Through an examination of 5 cities the authors indicate that an iterative strategic approach and a project-oriented vision, combined with an institutional stable commitment, can open a window of opportunity for cities to achieve effective decarbonisation.
This is an interesting paper and a contribution to the literature. I believe, however, that it needs better focus and presentation of the contribution. This will take, I believe, some restructuring. With these changes, the paper will be ready for publication. I review the paper below.
Review
The authors ask: How can local authorities effectively address the decarbonization of urban environments in the long and short run? Is it enough to develop a plan based on fragmented perspectives from diverse disciplines and local stakeholders? How can those interests and expertise be aligned into an integrated approach towards decarbonization?
Interestingly the authors only address the first question. They propose a framework by which to address the decarbonization of urban environments. It remains a proposal, however, because there is no evidence provided that indeed this framework was successful in reducing emissions and energy use in all the examined cities.
The second question, Is it enough to develop a plan based on fragmented perspectives from diverse disciplines and local stakeholders? Is only rhetorical. It is not answered in this study. It should be removed.
The third question, “How can those interests and expertise be aligned into an integrated approach towards decarbonization?” is probably the most important questioned asked, but the authors address it in one sentence (that a local authority decides upon the priorities). This simply “kicks the can down the road.” It does not demonstrate “alignment of interests”, and can possibly lead to other outcomes. Can the authors demonstrate that such authorities will always or sometimes or more often than not, do what is necessary? They do not provide such evidence. I would suggest that given the framework provided, it remains a theoretical question.
For example, the authors note that the success of planned interventions will depend very much on the level of agreement achieved among all parts at stake in the city (and district), lines 429-430? Yet, their solution for conflicting interests that do not allow reaching consensus, is that the Local Partnership decides the most beneficial intervention for the municipality as a whole according to the Strategic & Action Plan developed in Step 5, considering all stakes in the table. This certainly opens up politics. While there might have been much solidarity and widespread interest in low carbon futures in the five studied cities, it is not true for all cities. In my city, it may or may not work as claimed here.
What guides the evaluation of the transition process is the Smart Zero 95 Carbon City concept. The Smart Zero 95 Carbon City is “… a resource-efficient urban environment where carbon footprint is nearly eliminated; energy demand is kept to a minimum through the use of demand control technologies that save energy and promote raised awareness; energy supply is entirely renewable and clean; and resources are intelligently managed by aware and efficient citizens, as well as both public and private stakeholders”
There are many conditions in this definition.
- Resource-efficient city
- Carbon footprint is nearly eliminated
- Minimum energy demand
- Effective demand control technologies that also raise awareness
- Completely renewable energy supply system
- Intelligent management by citizenry, public and private sectors
These are ambitious and worthy goals. The authors say nothing about how well the cities they studied reached each of them, except that they did! For example, the authors mention that the study included the following 5 cities: Vitoria-Gasteiz (ES), Tartu (EE), Sonderborg (DK), Asenovgrad (BG) and Lecce (IT) and were examined in terms of several different areas of interest: Nearly Zero Energy Districts; Integrated Infrastructures and Sustainable Mobility; facilitated by Citizen and stakeholders’ engagement activities.
First, the authors should tell the readers a little about each city, something perhaps in the supplement about the population size, wealth/income level, resident education level, energy supply/demand, etc., to give the reader a notion of the types of residents we’re examining. The reader needs to know these issues in order to evaluate how effectively they addressed the decarbonization of urban environments in the long and short run.
Second, and more importantly, the readers want to know how effective the strategy was for each city. The authors only provide a scant amount of knowledge.
For the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, we learned that 1) they agreed on a Master Scenario for 2030 (line 286); 2) that energy-efficiency, energy supply, age, and accessibility of the building stock; the socio-economic and demographic characteristics; and the quality of the public space connected to mobility and access to green areas were the key reasons they choose the Coronacion district as the area of intervention with highest potential of emissions reduction and upgrade of quality of life standards (lines 400-404; and 3) they developed a detailed baseline analysis and successful engagement of key stakeholders to jointly work towards the vision (lines 701-702).
For the city of Sonderborg we learned that: 1) the commitment of the local authority with the process allowed to review each of the 50 Key Projects identified in the Action Plan to analyse how to engage on them or support them from the public administration side in order to maximise their impact, releasing an internal steering booklet for politicians and municipal employees (lines 345-347); and 2) that the process in this city involved almost 100 stakeholders from different sectors, who participated to create a concept which will drive the entire decarbonisation process (lines 703-704).
For the city of Tartu we learned that 1) the representatives are currently finalising its integrated energy action plan following Cities4ZERO
For the cities of Leece and Asenovgrad there are not details presented, except for the statement that all cities ended up with Cities4ZERO (line 759). This last result for all cities is the most important, but there is no evidence provided by the authors for reaching the ambitious goals, outside of this simple statement. Can they demonstrate that 6 goals outlined by the concept were reached in each city, or for any city? That would be very helpful and provide inspiration to the readers of this journal. This would require an enormous amount of information.
Rather, than providing that information, I think that the paper’s strengths are the detailed strategy that was developed. This could be the most important contribution of this work. It could be presented as such, a detailed framework developed over many years working with different cities. In this case, then most of the paper can remain intact. The framework, however, would remain as a ‘theoretical’ method for urban transitions to low carbon futures. A strategic method for further study.
It should not be presented as an finalized effective tool, however, unless the authors can demonstrate that it was so. If they insist on this, then there should be empirical data provided as requested and a section on the levels of uncertainty for transferring this method to other cities of different cities, cultures, etc. That is, the readers need to be convinced, through the presentation of data, that there were significant transitions in studied cities. How much energy saved? How much GHG emissions reduced? How much real participation, etc. Even with this information, there should be some consideration of uncertainty. All this information is what would go into a “Results” section, rather than what is presented in that section in the current document.
Minor
Pp2, Line 45 Please change to: “In Europe, during the last decade,…”
Throughout: please spell out acronyms such as CONCERTO, STEP-UP, PLEEC, InSMART, SMEs, etc the first time they are used.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper delves on how strategic processes can help to integrate diverse disciplines and stakeholders when facing urban decarbonisation, and presents Cities4ZERO, a step-by-step methodology for local authorities able to guide them through the process of developing the most appropriate plans and projects for an effective urban transition; all from an integrated,participatory and cross-cutting planning approach.
The topic is very interesting and methodology and results are well presented. The authors designed the entire research very well and presented it in detail in this paper. The discussion chapter is quite complex so it would be better to divide it into two chapters: discussion and conclusion. Discussion should briefly explained the achieved aim of the research and prove that by comparing the research with similar ones. The Conclusion section should then have final authors' conclusions regarding the obtained results, and how do these results contribute to the research field.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
