A New Perspective of Sustainable Perception: Research on the Smellscape of Urban Block Space
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper explores the use of smellscape to describe the smell and the associated emotion of Urban Block Space through heat map representation.
The aim to use smell to foster sustainable development of urban regional characteristics through thematic routes of green urban design is interesting.
The introduction must be largely improved and extended. In particular, the regional concentration of the literature among the Asiatic region represents a limitation of the paper.
Moreover, as the relevance of the olfactory stimuli in the multisensory perception has been investigated to several other physical factors (e.g. noise, lighting, thermal), I suggest the authors to extend the importance of small in the urban design, see the research of Ba and Kang, 2019; Jiang, Masullo & Maffei, 2016; Michael, Jacquot, Millot & Brand, 2003 and 2005, Spence, 2020.
In the “Research and Application of Smellscape” paragraph, the authors should discuss widely about the bias of the smellscape subjective experience and of all the factors that can affect significantly characteristics of odours (e.g. microclimate) inside the urban tissue.
Another issue is the need to characterize the presence of a specific class of odours, over the threshold.
The research methodology must be described in detail. Most of information related to the methodological part of the field survey are not explained.
Ethical issue are not mentioned by the authors.
A scheme can help to understand the flowchart of the Network Data Collection and Analysis
The use of the maps should discussed in depth, as well as their implication (people/tourists attraction/rejection).
How can the authors explain the time variation of the smell emission with the static character of the maps? Limitations should be widely discussed.
What about the map of the negative odour? This map could reduce the access to these areas favouring the positive ones.
Detailed comments:
- line 64. The authors should provide some short information about Mr. Liu Dunzhen's "Suzhou Classical Gardens". Who he is this person? What are these gardens?
- line 74. Explain the meaning of the “blind park”
- line 77. Remove, “etc.”
- line 90. "smell walk" cannot be defined an experiment. Rather, it is a field survey
- line 94. “Relationship” in “relationship”
- line 100. “The German scholar Rossano Schifanella…” the authors must use only valid references. Peer review journal are preferred to the conferences.
- line 111. “In the past, the research on odor landscape mainly used the subjective evaluation method and literature survey method”. Describes the methods.
- line 112. “Since various methods have their advantages, disadvantages, and applicability”. Must be described and commented.
- line 113. “the content of this research is based on the space of historical and cultural blocks in Guangzhou, a famous tourist destination in China.” The sentence must be changed. The meaning is unclear. Which method the authors use?
- line 118. “Real Perception Evaluation” change in “Subjective Evaluation in situ”
- line 126. “..food, natural, life emissions, urban construction, animals, 126 exhaust, medicine, tobacco, artificial odor, seafood, and others”. Explain the background or the motivations of this classification. Why these classes?
- line 138. Explain the content of the interview, and the procedure to involve and engage the subjects.
- line 140. Explain the column “Investigation and analysis” and the methodology to obtain the “Classification adjustment“ of the third column.
- line 144. Explain the meaning of the POI point.
Network Data Collection and Analysis
- line 147. Explain and descibe the “filtering the data”. In which consist?
- Which is the questionnaire used to get the emotional responses of the individuals.
- Figure 1 and Figure 4. The legenda and the descriptions must be in english, not in Chinese.
Author Response
Dear editor, thank you for your valuable comments, the ethical issues are approved, the information is as follows:
Ethic Committee Name: Guangzhou University Scientific Ethics Committee
Approval Code: GUE No. [2022] 001
Approval Date: February 16， 2022
According to your comments, I have revised the new manuscript in the attachment, please download and read, thank you very much!
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a very interesting study examining the odor landscape of the city center of Guangzhou, China. The paper could be edited for grammar and clarity, but the main concern with the paper is how it fits with the aims and scope of the Sustainability journal. The authors present a clear rationale for how this study relates to sustainability in the introduction and then explain how the results can lead to a sustainable future in the discussion. Other minor comments are listed below.
Line 107- “Only…”, this statement is confusing and should be rewritten for clarity.
Line 130- Was the Smellwalk completed in a single day or over a number of days?
Line 137- How were the 60 experimenters recruited? Was there any inclusion/exclusion criteria? Were they compensated for their time?
Line 152- How were the emotional words separated into positive and negative? Based on what criteria?
Line 192- What are the smell and aromas associated with medicine? Are they smelt by the participants or perceived based on prompts (ie. Advertising, signs, etc.)?
Line 397- Any limitations to the study?
Author Response
Q: Line 107- “Only…”, this statement is confusing and should be rewritten for clarity.
A: The smellscape research and mapping in the central urban area of Beijing is a good case.
Q:Line 130- Was the Smellwalk completed in a single day or over a number of days?
A: The researchers and 60 experimenters participated in the "Smellwalk" experiment and field survey, and completed the experimental survey within one day, obtaining survey data through their own sense of smell and interviews with passers-by and surrounding residents.
Q:Line 137- How were the 60 experimenters recruited? Was there any inclusion/exclusion criteria? Were they compensated for their time?
A: Based on the student union organization of Guangzhou University, 30 college students with normal sense of smell and 30 teachers were openly recruited as free volunteers, aged 18 to 50, with equal numbers of men and women.
Q:Line 152- How were the emotional words separated into positive and negative? Based on what criteria?
A: Based on the BosonNLP sentiment dictionary, sentiment words are mainly positive words and negative words, and the sentiment analysis interface of Baidu AI open platform is used to score the sentiment of the comment data.
Q:Line 192- What are the smell and aromas associated with medicine? Are they smelt by the participants or perceived based on prompts (ie. Advertising, signs, etc.)?
A: Guangzhou has a long history of traditional Chinese medicine. You can smell the taste of Chinese herbal medicines. Visually, you can see obvious pharmacy signs and billboards, such as the century-old pharmacy "Caizhilin" and so on. The unique characteristic of Guangzhou is that the herbal tea with the smell of Chi-nese herbal medicine and a lot of tangerine peel are placed at the entrance of each pharmacy. Some many old-fashioned drugstores and brands enhance sustainable development through cultural creativity. For example, the Chen Liji brand has been rejuvenated, forming a third unique layer of the old city smell background.
Q:Line 397- Any limitations to the study?
A: There are some deficiencies and limitations in the smellscape research in Guangzhou. The research was carried out in a limited area and time, failed to cover the entire city, failed to reflect the changes of odor near and far, and failed to simulate the impact of weather conditions on the urban odor landscape.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Editors,
I provide my research report regarding the manuscript "A New Perspective of Sustainable Perception: Research on the Smellscape of Urban Block Space", by Gao et al. This is an interesting and novel topic regarding smell odor landscapes in Guangzhou, south China. The research paper is relevant to the Sustsainability journal, precise and clear on its objective. Appropriate citations and references are also provided on urban planning, gardening, sustainability, smell environments and odor map constructions. So, this can be published without any modification. This article is worth reading by experts in Sustainability and urban studies in China, as well as environmental planners. The researchers who are interested in correlational studies can also benefit from this cross-disciplinary analysis of olfactory research with GIS. The statements in the manuscript are logically argued and the paper is well structured. Not only does the paper makes contribution in existing literature on Gunagzhou city development, it also does include future prospects on smell studies to be further explored by future researchers in relevant disciplines. I provided more detailed report in the attached PDF file.
With kind regards, - Reviewer.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
we very much appreciate the careful reading of our manuscript and valuable suggestions of the reviewer. I have modified it based on your comments, thank you for your most direct advice.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I'm sorry to say that, despite my expectations, in my opinion, the paper has not been improved with respect to the previous version.
Several aspects are still not clear and the methodological aspect is unclear.
Several assumptions are unsupported by the literature, which in some cases is old, unpublished in peer-review journals, or unreachable.
I think that the author should rewrite completely the methodological part which in my opinion is one of the big problems.
Other detailed comments can be found in the file attached.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Review Editor: Based on your valuable suggestions, I have made revisions. I have encountered some difficulties in finding journal literature and descriptions of research experimental methods, and there are still deficiencies. Please understand. thanks for your advice.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you to the authors for addressing my comments.
Author Response
Dear Review Editor: Based on your valuable suggestions, I have made revisions. I have encountered some difficulties in finding journal literature and descriptions of research experimental methods, and there are still deficiencies. Please understand. thanks for your advice.
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
Although the authors tried to improve some methodological aspects of the paper in my opinion the scientific soundness of the paper is still poor.
- Most of the references are only mentioned without comments from the authors. Must be improved. e.g. "From the "perceptual system" theory to the "emotional", "exciting" and "memory" characteristics of non-visual perception, people's attention and recognition. The olfactory perception can directly evoke emotion and directly evoke memory associations."
- Some references need to be supported by scientific references "Brand marketing expert Martin Lindstrom pointed out: '75% of human emotions are generated by smell." Check this kind of sentences in the text.
Sustainability is a scientific journal not a magazine. then scientific references are necessary to support them.
- The authors don't explain how they measure "emotion". Which scale did they use to measure the emotion? Which component of emotions they were able to investigate? They should provide, in the annex, the scale and the questionnaire they used in the original language and in the English translation. How the participants were engaged. they signed an informed consent?
- Among the limitations, the authors should discuss the importance of the environmental variables on the odour perception (wind intensity and direction, temperature) as well as on the presence of continuous odour sources, or of the evanescence of some other smell.
then, while I have tried to put in evidence all the critical points of the paper to improve it, I also understand that the work is original enough and, although the material and typology of the article cannot be used to define a methodology, is the authors intend to highlights with the necessary limitation, it can be used as starting point to describe the issues related to the definition of a smallscape map.
Author Response
Dear editor, I have put the point-to-point modification in the file, thank you for your valuable comments.
Please see the attachment
Q：Although the authors tried to improve some methodological aspects of the paper in my opinion the scientific soundness of the paper is still poor.
A: The scientific nature of the paper is based on the two methods of big data analysis based on computer "python" tools and field research by experimenters, and double demonstration is carried out. In-depth understanding of the composition of the smellscape in the old city of Guangzhou, to explain the application prospects of this research in urban planning and design.
Q：- Most of the references are only mentioned without comments from the authors. Must be improved. e.g. "From the "perceptual system" theory to the "emotional", "exciting" and "memory" characteristics of non-visual perception, people's attention and recognition. The olfactory perception can directly evoke emotion and directly evoke memory associations."
- Some references need to be supported by scientific references "Brand marketing expert Martin Lindstrom (2006) pointed out: '75% of human emotions are generated by smell." Check this kind of sentences in the text.
Sustainability is a scientific journal not a magazine. then scientific references are necessary to support them.
A: Brand marketing expert Martin Lindstrom pointed out that 75% of human emotions are generated by smell (Martin Lindstrom,2006). The more contact points between smell and consumers, the richer the experience and the deeper the memory. Olfactory perception can directly evoke emotion and directly evoke memory associations.
Lindstrom, M. Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound. Audio-Tech Business Book Summaries, 2006,15(1), 1-15.
Q：- The authors don't explain how they measure "emotion". Which scale did they use to measure the emotion? Which component of emotions they were able to investigate? They should provide, in the annex, the scale and the questionnaire they used in the original language and in the English translation. How the participants were engaged. they signed an informed consent?
A: Sentiment is measured through sentiment analysis, a method that uses sentiment score metrics to quantify qualitative data. (Medhat, Hassan, & Korashy, 2014). The data comes from people's text comments on online platforms, including words of various emotional colors and emotional tendencies, such as joy, anger, sadness, and joy. And criticism, praise, etc., through the natural semantic analysis method, analyze the evaluator and his emotional tendencies. Using the Python program to score, the text sentiment polarity is judged as negative and negative between 0 and 0.5, and between 0.5 and 1 is judged as positive and positive. The positive and negative attributes are used to determine the emotional tendency, and people's emotional values are connected to the space. Finally, people's emotional values are superimposed on the odor map to visualize the relationship between spatial odor and pedestrian emotions.
Medhat, W., Hassan, A., & Korashy, H. Sentiment analysis algorithms and applications: A survey. Ain Shams Engineering Journal, 2014,5(4), 1093-1113.
Q：- Among the limitations, the authors should discuss the importance of the environmental variables on the odour perception (wind intensity and direction, temperature) as well as on the presence of continuous odour sources, or of the evanescence of some other smell.
then, while I have tried to put in evidence all the critical points of the paper to improve it, I also understand that the work is original enough and, although the material and typology of the article cannot be used to define a methodology, is the authors intend to highlights with the necessary limitation, it can be used as starting point to describe the issues related to the definition of a smallscape map.
A: This study was conducted within certain constraints, and the fieldwork was conducted without rain, wind, or obstructions.As an important factor, environmental variables can be monitored in the follow-up research, and the issue of smellscape in environmental changes can be discussed in depth, so I will not discuss it too much in this article. Modifications as shown in line 175 of the text and lines 482-487 at the end of the text. Fundamental odors, ephemeral and temporal odors in the space environment were also mentioned in the focus area survey. Lines 378-384 in the text.
