Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities): Initial Good Practices Data
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
I read this paper as objective reader since my expertise lies within different kind of science. I must say that this is first paper that I had to read and read trying to find some visible place to make improvements.
Only thing I can suggest is on:
Line 44 - instead of 'ask' maybe 'find out' would be more appropriate for scientific vocabulary.
I've clearly understood what is you wanted to 'say'.
Maybe in 'Conclusions and Recommendations' to give stronger emphasis on practical examples.
In Line 456 - you said 'reward' - could you expand 'Conclusions and Recommendations' chapter with more actual recommendations based on you experience on matter. This way you scientific contribution would actually give more practical solutions to the matter.
Keep up good work.
Regards
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 1,
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I have read the paper entitled as "Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities): Initial Good Practices Data".
The paper is appropriate for the focus of the journal.
The paper focuses on SDG Goal 11, which is an important goal for rural development, the relevant SDG goal also is focused with concerns for living standards and poverty to increase the quality of life in a sustainable and adequare manner.
1) In the abstract, implications are noted as: "Overall, this analysis points 21
to the need for better and more systematic reporting on SDG 11 implementation, a more active 22
public sector role in SDG implementation and reporting, more focus on dimensions related to social 23
equity, and better formulation of urban sustainability targets and indicators in the future."
Could authors detail this finding more and also is it possible to relate it more to the humanitarian side of it? What would be the implications if reporting is improved following authors' suggestions?
2) Introduction: A) is too short. Though paper is sustainable development oriented, it lacks development economics and rural development approaches regarding sustainable economic development. Introduction should be extended with this respect. It is too short.
In addition, the contribution should be more discussed in this section.
B) Why only focused strictly on this goal only among all other goals? What is the motivation? Importance?
It should discussed very well in the introduction and conclusion.
C) I expect a sharp intoduction section that clearly highlights the importance of SDG 11, rural development and the contribution of the paper with this respect.
3) Sectioning is not explained. It should be added as a seperate paragraph at the last part of the intro section.
4) Section 2, background section is a section that focuses on literature review. However, recent literature is missing. Following papers should be used to further augment this section. Also, a discussion section is needed to discuss the findings of this study by comparing to recent literature and to show the contribution of this paper.
SDG 11, C Russell - BGjournal, 2018 - JSTOR
SDG 11: sustainable cities and communities–impacts on forests and forest-based livelihoods
T Devisscher, C Konijnendijk, L Nesbitt… - … development goals …, 2019 - books.google.com
Multi-stakeholder partnerships (SDG# 17) as a means of achieving sustainable communities and cities (SDG# 11)
A MacDonald, A Clarke, L Huang, M Roseland… - … of sustainability science …, 2018 - Springer
SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities: SDG 11 and the New Urban Agenda: Global Sustainability Frameworks for Local Action
Sustainable and inclusive–Evaluating urban sustainability indicators' suitability for measuring progress towards SDG-11
R Thomas, A Hsu, A Weinfurter - Environment and Planning …, 2021 - journals.sagepub.com
Sustainable development goals data-driven local policy: focus on SDG 11 and SDG 12
M Beccarello, G Di Foggia - Administrative Sciences, 2022 - mdpi.com
5) It is predicted that future lies on sustainable cities, large portion of populations are expected or predicted to be living in such cities, yes. However, due to climate change, this cities will be more vulnerable to natural factors and disasters such as floods and quakes. How will 'green' meet these cities? How will 'sustainability' meet these cities in the future? A discussion with this respect and how municipalities respond to SDG 11 should be discussed.
6) Authors should relate SDG 11 to AI and Industry 4.0. Further, authors should relate the concept of SDG here to developed economies how they reached stages of economic growth (Rostow's stages), from traditional economy to take-off to mass-consumption society and from there, to Industry 4.0 and effects on GHG emissions and climate change. The following papers must used be cited with this respect.
Nexus between Industry 4.0 and environmental sustainability: A Fourier panel bootstrap cointegration and causality analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production 386, 135786
An Empirical Analysis of AI Contributions to Sustainable Cities (SDG 11). S Gupta, A Degbelo.
Asymmetry in the environmental pollution, economic development and petrol price relationship: MRS-VAR and nonlinear causality analyses. Rom. J. Econ. Forecast 3, 25-50.
Economic growth and CO2 emissions: an investigation with smooth transition autoregressive distributed lag models for the 1800–2014 period in the USA. Environmental Science and Pollution Research 25 (1), 200-219
7) Could you discuss the data section more by extending it and giving more information about the data collection, from who the data is collected, agencies/institutions/governments and so on at the very beginning of the section where the empirics and data are introduced? A seperate subheading could also be added with this respect at the beginning of the relevant section. (I know it becomes clear as we keep reading however not clear at the beginning, where it should be for the readers)
8) As noted before, a discussion section with links to existent literature should be formed before conclusion section.
9) Future directions to be added/revised after revisions and critiques above will be needed.
No problems. Only some minor Grammar issues at very few places.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2,
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This study investigates the implementation of SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) by analyzing the UN SDG 11 good practices data from 2018 to 2021. The paper applies five criteria to the 336 SDG 11 responses and provides insights into the geography, actors, progress, areas of implementation, and scale of action related to SDG 11. The analysis highlights the need for better reporting, more active public sector involvement, and a focus on social equity and better formulation of urban sustainability targets and indicators. Finally, the authors advise improving the quality of responses to subsequent open calls by clarifying the criteria for categorizing, selecting and systematizing good practices. However, this study needs to address the following concerns before it gets published:
Formatting:
1. Appendix 1 and 2 in the text should correspond to Appendix A and B at the end of the manuscript. Please make amendments to harmonize the presentation of the text and the appendices;
2. The content of line 518: “Supplementary Materials: The following supporting information can be downloaded at: XXXX.”. Since there is no corresponding supplementary material in this paper, the authors can consider deleting the expression or directly and explicitly stating that there is no corresponding supplementary material to be downloaded.
3. The content of line 524: “Funding: Please add: This research received no external funding.”, the author can consider deleting the "Please add:".
Content:
1. What are the criteria for categorizing actors in SDG 11 in the content of “Actors addressing SDG 11” in line 167? In particular, please specify and give some examples of the categories of public agencies, UN entities, civil society, and private companies to clarify this.
2. What is the meaning of “Mean=53.7” at the bottom of Figure 4? Please be specific;
3. The conclusions and recommendations part of the article discusses the analytical detail analysis of submissions, which is also a very important exercise that will guide the organization of submissions for the subsequent UN open calls. It would therefore be appreciated if the authors could add a separate section in Section 4 to quantify and discuss the level of completion of the different analytical details in the currently available good practices submissions, and accordingly propose a completion checklist as a guide for submissions to the subsequent UN open calls.
4. The paper lacks a detailed explanation of the methodology for analyzing the UN SDG 11 good practices data. It would be helpful to provide more information on the data collection process, data analysis techniques, and any limitations of the dataset. Therefore, could you provide more details on the methodology used to collect and analyze the UN SDG 11 good practices data? Could you provide a more in-depth discussion on the limitations of the dataset and any potential biases or shortcomings in the UN SDG 11 good practices data?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 3,
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Article Title: Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities): Initial Good Practices Data
Review Report
Recommendation: I would recommend this article for publication pending the following MINOR REVISIONS.
The paper is consistent with MDPI Sustainability and fits in nicely with the overall journal scope. The lit. rev., references, and methodology are sufficient and properly weighted toward the study. The research idea is good and its significance novel. As such: novelty is medium-high. The results are also clear.
The paper looks at the SDGs and specifically, SDG 11 sustainable urban development. This article indicates the need for better and more systematic reporting on the goal, a more active public sector role in terms of reporting, a more focus social equity stance, and a better formulation of urban sustainability targets.
General remarks:
The paper is appealing to the reader, however, there still remains some revisionary work by the authors to strengthen the paper before it should be considered for publication. Namely, the Materials and Methods section should be more concise. The descriptive statistics should be included in this section. Explaining (in detail) the work conducted in the paper.
I congratulate again the authors for a nicely written paper.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 4,
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The majority of revisions are made and are sound. Which were not implemented are mostly my suggestions to enrich the paper with papers, but authors already added majority of them. My suggestions were to improve paper with economic aspects.
Not including development economics and rural development economics into the paper is also explained. However, these were suggestions and authors should come up with another solution to the main problem then: introduction section is still too short, novelty is not well presented, and still not including the importance of rural development with economic and industrial links is not sound. The goal itself even points at this direction. My previous suggestion was, as economies shift from traditional societies to industrial stages and then to mass consumption stages, rural population, migration to cities becomes central in the economy. However, industrialization that shifts populations to cities and its peripheries is a well known and discussed concept in structural change models in development economics. Though authors chose not to get into industrialization and how it leads to urban-rural migration, and maintaining manufacture production in the cities and peripheries should be discussed. Without providing much development to the rural population is shown to be desired in the literature such as the famous Lewis model and structural change models to maintain production with low living standards given to the labor, which is highly related to rural development and the relevant SDG in focus of the study. And recently, AI and Industry 4.0 further transform economies and production. These issues, links to production, economy are not implemented. If it is not ok to include them if authors think it is not vital, however, the other problem still continues. Still, introduction section is too short and also the section that follows it is in one direction only. I suggest to improve these sections with extending the paper's 1st and 2nd sections, my suggested directions are above. Authors can, if not want to, follow my suggestions but they still should come up with extending and augmenting the introduction and the section follows. Overall evaluation leads to my conclusion that, my decision is positive for this version of the paper in a major proportion, however, other issues exist that should be attended and implemented for the paper.
Other issues:
1) I suggested an abstract revision. Abstract is not still not revised in this new version, only a word is added? There might be a problem with the version sent to me since there is only one word in red font.
When I read the abstract, problem still maintains. What is the method used, it is not written. What is novelty, such as those obtained with this data, and the novelty in findings, should be better discussed and stated. Contribution of the paper is unclear and should be highlighted here for the reader. Policy suggestions to be more ellaborated.
2) Introduction section is still short. It should be extended as I noted above.
3) limitations such as self-reported data issue should not be in the materials and method. Authors discuss limitations at a very long section here which should be not here. If material is to be discussed, data should be quantitatively evaluated here, as it is missing in terms of statistics such as descriptives, this section should be augmented. A) Data is not explained in terms of its descriptive statistics such as mean, min., max., std. dev., normality test, skewness, kurtosis? Demographics if any? Country types could also work to be reported to point at distinctions, less developed, developing, emerging countries or regions could be reported in this table and discussed in a dedicated data section under materials method. After that, limitations should be discussed in a discussion section after empirical analysis, before conclusion. My suggestion is to form a Table before Table 1 with above-mentioned statistics and text to discuss it; then, move limitations to a dedicated subheading under discussion section, before conclusion section.
5) Conclusion ends with a critique for the "future" but what is meant with future here is about the data and SDG method published: "Overall, this analysis points to the need for better 20 and more systematic reporting on SDG 11 implementation, a more active public sector role in SDG imple-21 mentation and reporting, more focus on dimensions related to social equity, and better formulation of urban 22 sustainability targets and indicators in the future."
But what about future directions for researchers? Normally, future directions are expected for what will be done or to be suggested to be done in the future by the researchers.
What areas of research should be conducted by the researchers in the future, which methods and with which data should future papers use? Could authors make future suggestions for future directions as well?
Very minor typos.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
The responses, and rebuttal are sound and the last version of the paper improved over the previous one. I am positive for this version. Best regards and best of success to authors.
