Community Drawing and Storytelling to Understand the Place Experience of Walking and Cycling in Dushanbe, Tajikistan
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper present an interesting case study but it is very descriptive and the scientific sound is lacking. I miss the discussion of the wider context and proposal how to deal with the described situation.
The introduction is too long and should be shortened.
On the other hand, the description of the model area (Dushanbe) is unsufficient. The author says that the city is composed from "four major districts of varying levels of density" (L154-155) but these districts are not characterized. What is the city structure? Does it have historical city center? Or was it established and built newly during the Soviet period? In the text is mentioned that the new commercial and administrative center is building but it is not clear if or how this new center communicate with the rest of the city.
Stakeholders Semi-structured interviews: Who were the stakeholders? Only members of the EASST and YGT? Are they representative? City administrative should be also included. How many semi-structured interviews were done?
Research Approvals: Why is this statement part of the paper? It is statement of the research ethics and should be in the supportive materials for the submission.
Discussion is focused on the local results but discussion with the references is missing. Design of the research is not discussed at all.
L865-903: This part describes specific part of Dushanbe city and proposals of the landscape architects. But it is not clear if it was a part of the drawing workshops presented in the study or another activity. It should be clarified in the methods.
Author Response
Many thanks for taking the time to read and review the original version of my manuscript: it is very much appreciated, and I believe your comments have helped me to greatly improve the paper.
The work remains qualitative and descriptive, with the intention of meeting the guest-editors' scope of the special edition. However, I have greatly refined and revised the content and format following your review. I hope the revision is clearer and easier to understand.
The original Introduction was 4,926 words, and ran to line 431. The revised version is now 3,217 words, running to line 293.
I appreciate the concern over lack of in-depth descriptions of Dushanbe's morphology. I believe that the experience of the city is most important for the reader, so I have removed the hint of spatial description, to complete the description focuses, and added two new figures (new Figure 3. a and b) to give the reader a sense of the modern city.
The paper now describes the reason for focusing of EASST and YGT for stakeholder interviews for ground-truthing of participant outputs (and does not need to be representative of a broader population sample), and not including city officials. Please note, that the author was warned that city officials would not be willing to share any information that the city or state might consider negative or critical. (see Lines 101-122, and Lines 397-403).
The statement of research approvals has been removed to aide clarity.
The discussion is now locates the work within the literature, and the design and improvements for the future of the study and the design of methodology is now a major component.
The design work component of the original paper, has been removed to aide clarify and streamline the article.
Thank you again for your time and consideration. I have formatted the majorly-changed sections in red and underlined to help your second review. As you can see there are major structural changes. I hope the revision is much clearer and succinct.
Reviewer 2 Report
Manuscript ID: land-2061687
Title: Community Drawing and Storytelling to Understand the Place Experience of Walking and Cycling in Dushanbe, Tajikistan
Comments and Suggestions for Author:
The topic related to gather knowledge about walking and cycling from inhabitants is interesting and the idea of the study, thus an experment, is very valuable itself. In general, the form of presentation is understandable, but at the same time the description is very long-winded. The readers may have a feeling that the Author try to include all possible information in one paper, while the material needs very precise selection and order of presentation - it must be more condensed to make it easier for readers to understand better the whole content.
The manuscript has some weaknesses in my opinion, thus need to be improved to increase its scientific soundness.
1. Abstract is quite long, but focused mostly on presentation of the scope and stages of presented experiment. Regarding the rules of the Land journal, it should also include the short information about (a list) main results which are crucial for the experiment, and conclusions.
The key words support presented topic.
2. Introduction – this part of the manuscript is very developed, too much in my opinion – it should more briefly place the experiment in a broad context and highlight its importance (a value) to be clear for readers.
- Starting the article with '1.1 Contribution to this Special Issue' is controversial and/or even a mistake; it is better to present the background of the experiment and its main crucial aspects, at first, especially, if following the rules of the journal, there is a formal place for limitation proposed in the section of Discussion.
- Section '1.2. Rationale for the Study' is very extensive, and the form of presented information in the following subsections is more a mix of general information about transit as an element of sustainable landscapes and selected problems intertwined with information about Tajikistan and Dushanbe, including references to various experiences of other cities/countries. In my opinion, this part requires reorganization, including a clear division into key aspects creating a general background supported by strong literature presented first, then the situation in Tajikistan and Dushanbe. The last part of this section should be a clear formulation of the objectives of the experiment, which in the current form of the manuscript are 'hidden' in various places in the Introduction and therefore unclear to the reader.
- The references to literature should be also developed in this section of manuscript.
3. Materials and Methods – this section must be also better organized; the first part: ‘2.1. General Approach, and Limits of the Study’ is a compilation of all elements of the experiment etc., which should be presented in order in the following subsections. Presentation of limitations at the beginning may imply a kind of negation of the validity of the experiment - they should be explain at the end of the manuscript and/or argued in discussion, etc. This section should be improved using the clear order including the presentation of Material, and then presentation of implemented Method – especially used method should be described in the way which clearly allow others to replicate it and build on published results.
4. Results – the form of presentation of results, which include the tables and figures only, is insufficient; they need more precise description and interpretation – e.g. this part of manuscript requires both a brief introduction and a short comment/description related to most results. At the same time some other results, such as a concepts, are presented in the section of Discussion what is a mistake – results must be well presented and argued in one section (Results) to make it easy to understand for readers, thus this section needs improvement.
5. Discussion – the form of this section is also not very clear – there are some parts of more typical Discussion (e.g. general aspects related to the experiment) but without any references to literature, at the same time, a huge part is rather presentation of Results with some comments, also without any relation to other experiments and studies, etc. Author should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and the main objectives of proposed experiment. This part of the manuscript definitely needs improvement.
6. Conclusions – are generally valuable, but regarding the Discussion is long and focuses on so many aspects, the conclusions must be short and clear. This part of manuscript also needs some corrections in my opinion.
Summing up, the presented material is rather a long description of so many information, than a methodologically organized manuscript. It needs major revision. I can not recommend it to be published in its present form.
Author Response
Many thanks for your time and consideration in reviewing my original manuscript. I hope this revision responds to your careful comments, satisfactorily.
The revise paper is considerably condensed and streamlined, to aide clarity and the thrust of the work. The original manuscript was some 13,690 words over 28 pages, whereas the revised version is just 10,763 words over 23 pages. Thank you for encouraging me to make this substantial edit.
The introduction is considerably shorter, and the section '1.1 Contribution to this Special Issue' has been removed, and re-written as a rationale for the work. Limitations of the work and its design are moved to the Discussion section.
The introduction has been more clearly formatted to include the suggested content of general information, local case, and objectives and contribution of the study.
The methods section has been cleared of limitations discussions, to leave a clear focus on what was undertaken and how.
The results section has been substantially reformatted to include descriptive and interpretative content, and results and concepts are removed from the following discussion (especially landscape architectural design to follow the workshops).
The discussion has been greatly changed to focus upon placing the study more clearly within a literature context, and provided a discussion on limits of the design and project, to help clarify possible trajectories for future work.
The conclusion has been removed, as there was too repetition from the discussion.
Overall, I thank you for your insightful and helpful comments. I hope the revised paper is clearer and tried to cover less-ground and, in particular, is more succinct and enjoyable to read.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Manuscript ID: land-2061687
Title: Community Drawing and Storytelling to Understand the Place Experience of Walking and Cycling in Dushanbe, Tajikistan
I appreciate all works done by Authors. The revised presentation of the study is more methodological and clear, better organized in the section of introduction, and discussion. Some last corrections/improvement is needed in selected parts – main comments and suggestions are listed below:
1. The abstract is clear. Key words are related to the presented material.
2. The part of Introduction is much better organized and thus easier to find out most important aspects related to the presented workshop/study, also relation to literature is correct in my opinion. The section of Literature review is well presented with good relation to important background and context for presented study.
3. The aim of the study is still a bit hidden in quite long description in subsection 1.2 Contribution of the Present Study; in my opinion using a wording that the study ‘looks to....’ than ‘the main aim/objective of the study is to....’ is too informal.
4. There area two subsections with the same number: 1.2 (see lines: 100 and 123) – it must be improved.
5. Material and Methods – this section is well organized after correction, and clear.
6. Results – this part which starts with tables without any introductory short information about their scope/order and few general words is still insufficient in my opinion; a brief introduction is still needed at the beginning of the section 3. Results. The further parts are well described.
7. Discussion – after the development of this section it is easier to understand the role and value of the presented study and its idea, also some relations to cited literature make it more clear.
8. Some very clear and short conclusions summing up the outcomes of presented study could increase the value of manuscript.
I can recommend the manuscript to be published after minor revision.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for taking further time to consider the manuscript. The first round of comments was very helpful in steering the required major changes, and the second round was equally helpful in allowing the paper to reach its full potential through these minor changes:
- Abstract - no change, thank you.
- Introduction - no change, thank you.
- The aim of the study has been shortened and made clearer. Some information has been moved to the previous section (Lines 100-110) and the wording of the remaining section (now corrected to 1.1.3) has been made more formal and to the point (Lines 111-123)
- See above.
- Materials and Methods - no change, thank you.
- Results - I have added a short introductory paragraph (Lines 415-426)
- Discussion - no change, thank you.
- Conclusions - I have added a short concluding paragraph (Lines 755-787)
