Explorative Study on Urban Public Space Renovation during COVID-19: Test of a Visual Web-Based Survey about the City of Saint German en Laye, France

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is better to conduct a better literature review and to review similar articles completely and to see the results of this review in the article.

Also, the analyzes should go beyond statistical descriptions and more advanced statistical tests should be used for deeper investigations.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your suggestions. The literature review has been amplified. It was scoping review and the mean was to have a view of state of the art and if similar studies have been conducted. The data have been counted using descriptive statistics, specifically median, mean, and, mode. The survey collected the users’ perceptions, and the Community-based survey seemed the most appropriate. The tool wasn’t made to assess urban qualities but to collect the users’ opinions about the refurbishment of the city of SGL. As reported in the Conclusion section, more advanced statistical tests will be considered in future development and studies.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1) On line 69, the author argues that "...but, to the best of our knowledge, rapid surveys that target COVID-19 urban redevelopment do not exist."

COVID-19 has indeed changed people's lives at present, and it has also brought new challenges and demands to urban renewal around the world. However, in the introduction, the authors should further cite literature to discuss what challenges are faced by urban public spaces under the outbreak of public health events? Why don't the Assessment framework/model and criteria from previous studies apply?

 

A1) Thank you very much for this comment. Based on reviewers' suggestions we have amplified the topic of other strategies adopted for urban spaces during Covid 19 pandemic in the introduction. Further considerations on studies on urban public space challenges have been also included. We also specified that this study has been conducted during the first Covid-19 wave, therefore we had to create something new, based on the needs of the specific city of SGL.

 

2) Aside from the sixth criterion, the rest of the assessment criteria are not related to COVID-19 are they? In other words, in the past, the other five criteria were also used to assess the quality of urban public space. Are these five criteria only? Please explain how the induction of the criterion achieves stable convergence?

 

A2) Thank you very much for this comment. Yes, the survey criteria are related to urban public space challenges that Covid-19 also impacted. As correctly highlighted by the reviewer only criterion 6 is explicitly referring to Covid-19 or health issues. We clarified in the methodology section that the survey construction has been made starting from literature review and stakeholder interaction, also referring to pre-covid examples.

 

3) Please understand that it is not clear to me how the authors count the data provided by the subjects in the questionnaire. Perhaps, this requires a detailed and clear introduction by the authors (only by means? Descriptive statistics? Why not use a multi-criteria decision-making method?). In this study, are the interactions between the evaluation criteria sufficiently considered?

 

A3) Thanks for your comment. We clarified in the Methodology section that data have been counted using descriptive statistics, specifically median, mean and, mode.

Multi-criteria analysis has not been used due to the fact that the survey collected the users’ perception on some specific installation and a complex problem has not been formulated, neither the entire city involved;  the visual web-based survey was considered the most appropriate tool to target time and rapidity of the research activities. We reviewed the manuscript to improve clarity and readability as requested by the reviewers and we detailed this process in the Methodology section and in the next answer to reviewers.

For example, we are aware that some research in the field of sustainability provided methods to analyze the interaction between criteria, but they did it while weighting these criteria (i.e. Zhang, L. et al, 2020; Chen, Y., Zhang, D., 2016). These works used the multi-criteria analysis to evaluate different criteria of sustainability in several cities in China.

Our study wants to collect the opinion of different users of the city, as the goal of the research is thus to value the subjectivity of citizens. The intervention is simple, not the entire city but only some site-specific modifications. The approach that we have conducted was more architectural, not for evaluating the overall sustainability of a complex system but rather to provide indications to policymakers based on people's perception of a series of criteria related to the built environment characteristics in light of Covid-19.

 

5) I don't think the assessment framework/model established in this study is innovative enough. Authors are invited to give explanations and emphasis in the "Results and Discussion" or "Conclusions" of the paper.

 

A5) Thank you very much for your suggestion. The framework has been made specifically for the analysis of the city of SGL, to understand the ability of the design intervention to respond to the needs of users. From an analysis of the existing literature on web-based surveys conducted in recent years, only a questionnaire was used in the Covid era to understand the needs of users and not to evaluate specific interventions to be performed for the improvement of the livability of the urban space. (i.e. Dushkova, D et.al., 2021). The innovation part is not related to the assessment framework itself but rather the comprehensive study on the specific city at the early stage of Covid-19 and related to the easiness to collect users' feedback through this visual web-based survey. This has been clarified in the Introduction and Conclusion section

 

6) Generally speaking, the assessment of urban built environment quality includes the following steps:

⚫ Preliminary construction of an evaluation framework;

⚫ The reliability and validity of the verification criteria;

⚫ Weights of training evaluation criteria/clarification of the influence relationship between criteria;

⚫ Performance evaluation of empirical cases.

The authors did not fully follow the above steps in this study, please give reasons and justifications.

 

A6) Thank you very much for this comment.

The process that has been followed was easier. The tool wasn’t made to assess urban qualities but to collect the users’ opinions about the refurbishment of the city of Saint Germain en Laye. This has been better detailed in the Introduction section (objective of the study) as well as in the revised abstract

The aforementioned structure was considered unnecessary at this stage but might be considered in future development and studies that have the objective of providing a general framework for built environment quality.

 

7) For reader friendliness, the English language of this manuscript needs to be edited.

 

A7) Thank you very much for your suggestion, the language has been edited with the support of proficient speakers in our Department; since we are not mother tongue we are available for a double check with a professional service in case the Reviewers or Editors feel this is necessary.

Reviewer 3 Report

After reading the paper in depth, I should like to point out some comments, with the aim of contributing to the improvement of the paper. The theme covered by this study is interesting even if its level of originality is not so high.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1. The literature review is inconsistent. A well-organized literature review based on recent reference papers is required.

 

A1) Thank you very much for this comment.

The review conducted was scoping, with the aim to understand briefly the state of the art in the field. The study has been conducted at an early stage of Covid-19 where limited research dealt with this topic. The literature exploration is reported in the Introduction section and more recent studies have been added in the revised version of the manuscript.

 

2. The authors must introduce a new section or subsection with motivation, what does the paper contribute to other existing ones?

 

A2) Thanks for your suggestion, we clarified this issue in the revised version of the manuscript and in the different reviewer's replies. In particular, the aim of the paper has been explained more in detail in the Introduction section while the specific contributions to the existing state of the art are clarified in the Discussion and Conclusion section.

 

3. According to your statement, the data was conducted in “The research activities began in July 2020 with the preliminary analyses and continued in August 2020”. The data is old.

 

A3) Thank you very much for this comment. As reported in the Acknowledgement section, data collection and analysis were part of a wider research project that ended in 2021 and it wasn’t possible to share data before the closing of the project. The data that have been used are primary, original, and not published before or elsewhere, therefore, cannot be considered old. The methodology section has been reviewed as well to make the process clearer.

 

4. Please write the source of Figure 1.

 

A4) The Figure has been made by the authors; the caption has been reviewed to clarify the source

 

5. In section (2.1. Assessment framework development). Why have you written some headings in Capital letters?

 

A5) The headings are in capital letters to identify uniquely the criteria.

 

6. I think no need to provide Figure 2.

 

A6) Thank you very much for this suggestion, the figure has been deleted and kept only in the annex.

 

7. So many scholars have worked on Covid19 and public spaces Please highlight your contribution.

 

A7) From a screening of the existing literature on web-based surveys conducted in recent years, only a questionnaire was used in the covid era to understand the needs of users and not to evaluate specific interventions to be performed for the improvement of the livability of the urban space. This research presents a direct application of a case study, collecting opinions and needs of real users. A clearer highlight of the original contribution is reported in the Discussion and Conclusion section

 

8. What was your sampling size? Why you have just analyzed the results of 371 respondents? Related to this section and due to the bad explanation of the methodology, there are inconsistencies in important things. How many people do you apply?

 

A8) The sampling size was calculated considering the population of 45000 inhabitants (population of saint Germain rounded up and people involved by Politecnico di Milano). The survey has been submitted using emails and social networks pages of citizens of SGL. We analyze 371 valid answers, a number that is in line with other similar studies, conducted in the same period. We explained more in detail in the text the methodology used.

 

9. In section (2.2. the Web-based Survey definition) you have described the survey is composed of three sections: but from where you have taken these sections? No reference is given, please justify this with Literature, have other researchers used the same method?

 

A9) Thanks for your comment. The three sections are the different parts in which the survey is divided. For instance, we named the first part for the introduction section, the second part for the core of the survey, with the questions, and the third for general demographic information. We used this description to give a better explanation of the survey structure. The literature found that there are various ways to build surveys, for example, works conducted in the same period used a similar way, keeping demographic data at the end of the survey. (i.e. Dushkova et al., 2021) We further detailed this methodological process in the section Methodology.

 

10. Moreover, you have written in the same section “The questions were related to the six criteria previously identified in the assessment Framework Development” here also no reference is given. Why do they use these variables? Are there other variables?
11. How do the other researchers approach the same problem? Is there any way to compare your work with others? The reviewer does not see any superiority of this work over the existing methods.

 

A10) The six criteria have been explained in 2.1. paragraph and this mean that the questions, that the survey is composed of, are divided into six criteria.

There are a few studies that approach the same problem of collecting stakeholders' and users' opinions, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. The novelty of this study is that the research tried to intercept users' opinions during a critical period due to restrictions and lockdown, seizing suggestions for improving the quality of public space and taking in instances from real users of the built environment. We clarified this process in the Methodology section

 

11. In the Data collection and analysis section, you have mentioned “No specific sample size has been selected, to get a view of all categories of people and ages. Data collection have been made using the platform Google form and exporting the results to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet”. How will you justify this statement from literature?

 

A11) Thank you very much for this comment. Why this sentence we mean that from the citizen of SGL and contacts that received the survey to be answered we haven’t targeted a specific sample to reach, trying to reach as many as possible users and stakeholders.

The literature suggests using different modes of data analysis, with studies using platforms such as SPSS software. However, in addition to not being open source, they are also difficult to manage, while Excel, given the small number of data, was effective for analyzing the data extracted from google forms.

In the same way, it was decided to use google Forms as it is quick to write and easy to use even for less experienced users. We clarified this process in the Methodology section

 

12. Describe the Methodology with a flow chart, it will be easy for readers to understand.

 

A12) Thanks for the suggestion. The methodology was exemplified using the flowchart reported in Fig 1.

 

13. The results and analysis are poorly written. The reviewer does not see any

new method applied to analyze the results. Based on percentages and graphs you cannot justify a scientific study.

 

A13) The study used descriptive statistics, analyzing data with median, mean, and, mode. The study objective is not to describe a new method but to develop and apply a rapid visual web-based survey capable to collect the opinion of the users of the space of an urban renovation project for a medium-sized European city during the covid-19 pandemic.

This has been clarified in section Introduction.

 

14. The "Discussion and Conclusion" part should be rewritten avoiding general statements that are not demonstrated nor explained previously.

 

A14) Thank you for this comment. We rewrote this part accordingly referring to the previously explained concept. In this revised version of the manuscript, the Discussion section reports the comparison between different features of the design solution, strengths, and limitations of the survey positioning the research in a wider field of study. The conclusion section reported the final remarks, limitations, and future developments.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I consider this manuscript to be publication-ready (after minor revisions).

Reviewer 3 Report

Accept in present form after incorporating all comments. 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf