Parque Augusta (São Paulo/Brazil): From the Struggles of a Social Movement to Its Appropriation in the Real Estate Market and the Right to Nature in the City

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

A beautifully written and extremely interesting paper of high academic quality, discussing critical current urban transformations. I think it can be published as it is, after a check for potential typos etc. 

Sincere congratulations to the author. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for the time you used to do the evaluation, the positive exam of the manuscript and the congratulations. I corrected the typos and added some other information to contemplate the other reviewers.

Reviewer 2 Report

The work deals with a very important issue of nature in the city. As the author rightly notes, city without nature does not exist - nature is ncorporated into the very existence and survival of the city.

As nature in the city is a rather rare and desirable good, hence cities and nature are in the center of this disputed arena. Since capital has greater power than the local community, we are dealing with green gentrification.

In my opinion, the article is interesting and relevant. It has a very extensive literature review. I read it with interest.

Requires a few small tweaks as indicated below:

- in my opinion lines 97-153 are more Introduction than Method,

- divide section 2. Method, case study and methodology into 2.1 The study area and 2.2 Methodology,

- it is not clear when construction corporations bought land from a private owner,

- the area of the park was given, but it is not known how much area was public (municipality) and how much was privately owned,

- figure 6 - it is a very important figure, but the map legend is illegible and we do not know what the abbreviations in the legend mean,

- line 547-548 - was the vicinity of the park the only feature that had an impact on the value of the constructed square meters?

- line 542 - what is [5967] - should it be [59-67]? Line 590 is the same.

Author Response

Thank you very much for the time you used to do the evaluation and exam the manuscript. I managed to attend all your suggestions, to provide more clarifications and to do some corrections.

About figure 6, now figure 7, I opted to make an extract of the full zoning map to focus on the area around the Park and translate the legend of the zones that appear in the extract. I hope this option can contemplate your suggestion.

About line 547-548, the answer is yes. The price August/2018 captured already the impact (positive or negative) of a subway station located 500m from the park that was opened in January/2018.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have written an interesting analysis of an important issue. Their analysis is unique and would provide a useful contribution to this journal. Before acceptance, I suggest a few improvements:

First, the paper is a bit long and it can be cut down in most sections.  As it reads, it is a bit sprawling and sometimes hard to follow. This starts with the title (which is too long) and extends through most parts of the study. This includes the introduction which is a bit long-winded and too broad to start, rather than focused on the case study at hand, its theoretical importance, and the central research objectives that the authors intend to pursue.

Second, the methods could be refocused and possibly incorporate a figure or some sort of graphic to help the reader understand what the authors did in the study. The process is interesting, but sometimes hard to follow.

Third, the results section is very long and could be refocused to highlight what the authors found in their research. This could include trimming the text, refocusing the arguments, tying the section back to the central literatures/research objectives, and adding a table/figure to highlight what was found.

Fourth, the authors could clarify the theoretical importance of their work in the abstract and conclusion where their argument can be a bit lost. The authors have developed an interesting argument which would only be strengthened with a clearer conclusion/discussion on the value of their case analysis as it pertains to existing literature on this topic.

Good luck with these revisions.

Author Response

Thank you very much for the time you used to do the evaluation and the detailed exam the manuscript. I managed to attend almost all your suggestions, provide some clarification and correct parts of the text.

Points 1 and 3. I shortened the title and the introduction. I tried to cut down more, but it could remove parts that were positive evaluated by the other 2 reviews. Personally, I am making some efforts to write shorter papers, but there is a long cultural tradition in my area, department and country to valorize long articles. The process of the park creation was legally complex and I tried to show all the steps and U-turns, and that demanded some extra paragraphs and it is really had to follow (even for somebody familiar with the production of urban space in Brazil). The construction of the dialectical approach demanded also some adjustments, but it is intrinsic to the method to have this progressive-regressive movement that I tried to preserve in the text, instead producing a figure/table that could condense the findings but cost the coherence with the approach. For the next article, with the continuation of the research with other empirical data, I will write a more objective text like you suggested and I really appreciate the suggestion.

Point 2. I rearranged the methods and produced a simple figure to clarify it

Point 4. I tried to strengthen the arguments in the conclusion and clarify in the abstract.