Resilience and Urban Regeneration Policies. Lessons from Community-Led Initiatives. The Case Study of CanFugarolas in Mataro (Barcelona)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Report

Resilience and urban regeneration policies. Lessons from community-led initiatives. The case study of Can Fugarolas, in  Mataro (Barcelona)

 

The main aim of the paper  is to evidence grassroots and community-led initiatives as enablers, or catalyzer  for urban resilience. The authors use a case study Can Fugarolas, in  Mataro (Barcelona).

Although I found aspects of this paper of interest and merit, I also have serious reservations

The introduction section.

The introduction is not writing using standard norms of academic paper. For me there is no an introduction section. The authors start directly with the theoretical section. As a result, it is difficult to figure out the main idea developed in the paper, the aim of the study, the research problem or observations that justify the theoretical background, the methodology and so one.

The theoretical section

While sections about Resilience and Panarchy, Resilience and Panarchy in the Urban Realm, Self-Organization and Urban Resilience  seem to be relevant, we do not see a very clear guideline. Furthermore, the authors do not explain well the research problem that justify the study neither the research question.

For instance lines 161, 162, the authors declare “However, from the perspective of urban planning and regeneration policies to date, attempts to integrate self-organization has limited to participatory planning processes, which has produced disappointing or poor results”. There are no references and demonstrations that support this statement.

Moreover, the authors affirm that “the paper embraces Fath’s approach” without any explanations about that approach.

 

Methodological section

For the case study the author focus on the Can Fugarolas (The project) and affirm “It consists of a socio-cultural community-led initiative set up in 2013 from the recovery of a derelict industrial building previously devoted to as a vehicle repair workshop”

The authors should give more explanations about this community, what is the main characteristics of this community. Is the Project Can Fugarolas the only initiative led by this community?.

About the data collection, the authors explain that they use several methods without justify the relevance of each methods in the study. They explain also that they used quantitative approach and survey, there is no explanation about the data analysis, particularly quantitative data analysis.

The authors also should give more explanation about the structure of the survey form, what are the main question, what are the complementarities between the interviews and the survey.

The authors also should justify  the link between  the Fath’s approach” and the Resilience Alliance (2007) principles and their relevance to the study, not separately justify each approach. It could be better to do it at the beginning of the methodology section after the explanations on the case study.

The authors should add a section about the data analysis.

 

Results section

It is very difficult to analyze the results due to the weaknesses of the methodological part and the absence of the introduction that highlight the main objectives and ideas developed in the study.

Beyond results that are directly based on the Documental Revision, there is no evidence that data from participation, interviews and survey support main conclusions of the authors. The authors should explain based on a Data analysis section, how does each of the data source, or the mixed data source help them to  construct the tables, the graphics, using  the Fath’s approach” and the Resilience Alliance principles.

The authors do not present also the results from the survey

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper may bring interesting contribution to the topic, making a correlation between the resilience and the community led initiatives. 

However, the paper does not include the research questions, objectives followed and a graphical structure followed during the research. The paper must be structured to respond to the research question and objectives. Currently, the paper is not having a coherent structure.

Table 1 - Research methodology & data collection summary should be better explained for Interviews, column - social subsystem Participant observation.

It is recommended to explain more clear and practical in the Results the correlation of different concepts such as Panarchy, Revolt etc, with the subsystems.

It is also recommended to check again and respect the template of the Sustainability.

Line 95 contains repetition of the same idea.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper was improved and, in my opinion my be published

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
we appreciate your comments. They have been very constructive in improving the structure and clarity of the paper.
Regards