The Oasis of Peace? Social Perception of Urban Parks from the City-Dwellers’ Perspectives

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Overall, the paper was well done.

2.  When I saw the abstract, I was assuming that the paper would provide information on ethnic/racial differences. The reference to cultural battles is probably more about individual differences. Although the author(s) note the socio-economic limitations of the participants (2/3rds of the participants had bachelors and masters degrees), I think this should be acknowledged in the title - maybe making reference to the characteristics of the respondents.

3. There is a significant body of literature reporting on the impact of greenspace on violent crime, most of which suggests crime reductions. However, the paper focus on parks and an increase in crime. Here are a few examples of both (usually only first author listed), the majority of which indicate a reduction in crime: Dong, 2015; Donahue, 2011; Donavan & Prestemon, 2012; Garvin, 2013; Gilstad-Hayden, 2015; Gorman, 2009; Harris, Larson & Ogletree, 2018; Heinze, 2018; Kim, 2018; Kondo, 2015; 2016; 2017; Kuo, 2001; Lee, 2013; Li, 2008; Lim, 2005; Locke 2017; Luke; 2013; McCord, 2017; Nitkowski, 2017; Sadatsafavi, 2022; Sadler, 2017; Schuyler, 2018; Seymore, 2010; Shepley, 2019; Snelgrove, 2004; Sparks, 2011; Stodolska, 2011; Troy, 2012; 2016; Wilcox, 2013; Wolfe, 2012.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and overall positive feedback. Based on them, we:  

- changed the title to better reflect the research focus

- added new references to papers focusing on crime in urban parks

- did detailed proofreading

Once again, thank you for your help.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

From the perspective of urban park, this paper makes a qualitative study on how urban park should be used, what functions it should perform or what characteristics it should have according to the results of 48 interviews. Although there are some interesting ideas, overall, there is a lack of scientific innovation and contribution and limited scientific innovation in the content.The technical contribution on the method is relatively weak, I think this article still needs to be improved. Therefore, it is not recommended for publication in this journal.

Author Response

Thank you for very much your feedback. We have elaborated the manuscript in more detail to improve its quality. For example we:

- provided more details about methodology, namely the selection criteria, analytical procedures

-  changed the title to better reflect the research focus

- did proofreading

- enriched discussion.

Once more thank you very much.

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The methodology and processing of the topic is based on logical analysis. An important focal point of the analysis is the investigated location and local society, which is indicated in the introduction, but the location and locality of the case study are not clearly stated in the title, in the interpretation of the results, or in the conclusion.

Would it be important to indicate in the title of the study the location that forms the basis of the case study, while in the interpretation of the analysis and in the conclusion to interpret the specific social and local conditions, how do local factors influence global issues?

The location and social features should be presented in more detail in the introduction, and then the context should also be presented in the interpretation of the results.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your inspiring feedback. Based on this, we 

- specified location and locality and identificated criteria for chosen streets

- changed the title to better grasp the nature of the case study

- did proofreading of the text and enriched literature

Thank you very much for your comments.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Sustainability- 1835174

Urban Park the oasis of peace, the ground for cultural battle

 

This is an interesting article using limited number of focus group participants views on use valuation of urban parks in one part of the Brno Czechoslovakia. The article has very awkward English usage throughout and needs a native English speaker to edit it. Many of these issues are listed below but I may have missed some. The description of Materials and Methods needs to be greatly expanded as noted.

 

Introduction

Line 26- not neglected but just not as much social science research on the subject

Line 32- do you mean “motivate” or “allow” for more physical….

Line 56- is this negatively or positively correlated?

Line 75- suggest- … and so promote…

Line 125- suggest- …of how residents differ in…

Line 132- -suggest - …prehistorical state…

Line 142 – suggest – …time needed to reach…

 

Materials and methods

Authors need to have a location map showing the city and the location of the seven parks. Also, illustrative photos of some of the parks would be good to show the physical character of these urban parks.

Line 165- what was the criteria for the selection of the seven urban parks?

Line 166- what random method was used for street selection?

Line 167- what method was used for focus group invitation?

Line 170- how were the six groups selected?

Line 172 – how was it determined to have eight focus groups?

Lines 179-186- What did the focus group facilitators do? Was there a sequence of questions posed to the focus group participants? Did they use the same sequence between facilitators and focus groups or was there just free flowing dialog? How much preliminary information was given about the study intent? 

These are all important methodological questions that relate to the study reliability and validity and generalizability.

Lines 187-190 was coding done by hand or with computer software? Was grounded theory used with coding or some other rationale?

 

Results

Reviewer suggests putting all individual respondent quotes in italic font and without indentations from text to quote to text.

Lines 282-282 suggest using “versus” rather than “x” throughout

Line 294- please explain who Romany are?

 

 

 

Discussion

The general tone of the text is a bit too informal, and discussion should build on the study results and not to infer if there is no specific data to back up these inferences. I would like to have seen more comparison of results to any other similar study.

Line 450-451 suggest -…something to serve social needs…

Lines 462-464- sentence does not make sense

Lines 467-468- sentence does not make sense

Lines 474-476- run on sentence

Line 531 Limitations- how do you know how representative the focus group sample is with such a small number of respondents? As you have stated in line 544- this most likely is a positively inclined sample. Also need to talk about generalizability of results beyond this specific geographic area.

 

Author Response

We very much appreciate your detailed comments and feedback. Based on them, we

- provided more details about methodology, namely the selection criteria, analytical procedures, maps of chosen parks 

- modified the Discussion to meet your comment and corrected the references so that the links to similar studies are clear

- elaborated Limitations in more details

- did profound proofreading

 

Thank you very much for your comments and recommendations.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 5 Report

I am grateful to have had the pleasure of reviewing this manuscript.

The themes are certainly consistent with the aims of the journal.

The text is well structured and the limitations of the study have been clearly stated.

There could be more discussion on the number of participants, which according to the authors and other researchers seems to be sufficient to conduct a valid analysis. However, I would suggest a change to the title, indicating that this article states 'a first insight into...', so that more people can be involved in the future.

 

Author Response

Thank you for your useful suggestions. Based on them, we

- elaborated Limitations in more detail 

- changed the Title of the manuscript 

- did profound proofreading

Thank you very much for your comments and recommendations.

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks to the author for the careful revision. I think the quality of the article has been greatly improved. It should be noted that your article references are older, it is suggested to update the references properly. Also, there are some formatting errors in your article, please make sure your materials are properly prepared and formatted before submitting revisions.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your latest comments and recommendations, we:

• have corrected formal errors
• we added and corrected the literature of the article

Once more thank you for your suggestions.

 

 

Reviewer 4 Report

Authors have adequately responded to this reviewer's previous review comments.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your reaction - we did very small changes in the article - we have made some small formal changes in the text and added few literature sources. Thank you once more very much for your review!