Assessing and Comparing the Visual Comfort of Streets across Four Chinese Megacities Using AI-Based Image Analysis and the Perceptive Evaluation Method

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript presents an interesting study on evaluating streetscape comfort at city level and comparing this perceptive quality across four Chinese megacities. In particular, the authors attempt to deliver street design implications from a more localised perspective with the consideration of city development characteristics.

 I have the following comments/suggestions to improve the quality and relevance of the manuscript's content.

 -        Try to emphasize the comparison more in the title, since a large part of analysis and discussion in this manuscript is about streetscape comfort comparison.

 -        The abstract needs to contain the key findings and conclusions in relation to the comparison results, which are currently missing.

 -        The section 1.2 in introduction needs to contain more updated AI-based evaluation articles and also to see how this literature can illustrate a way of showing the necessity of conducting this comparative study.

 -        Provide more details in the 2.4 sections in the methods. For example, How many raters? Are they trained and if so, how? How are these participants selected? How many pictures do they rate on average? How do you validate the rating results? Do you cross-validate them? Is one picture rated by multiple raters? Do you use an average score?

-        The results needs to contain descriptive analysis over the street classifications results, and also, comparative analysis across four cities.

-        The discussion needs to contain the implications of how the comfort-related street indicators and their distribution within the cities can instruct future design. Use subtitles for the discussion if possible.

Author Response

Reviewer 1
This manuscript presents an interesting study on evaluating streetscape comfort at city level and comparing this perceptive quality across four Chinese megacities. In particular, the authors attempt to deliver street design implications from a more localised perspective with the consideration of city development characteristics.

 I have the following comments/suggestions to improve the quality and relevance of the manuscript's content.

 -        Try to emphasize the comparison more in the title, since a large part of analysis and discussion in this manuscript is about streetscape comfort comparison.

Re: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have adjusted the manuscript title from ‘Assessing the visual comfort of streets at city scale using AI-based image analysis and the perceptive evaluation method: A comparative study of four megacities in China’ to ‘Assessing and comparing the visual comfort of streets across four Chinese megacities using AI-based image analysis and the perceptive evaluation method.’

 -        The abstract needs to contain the key findings and conclusions in relation to the comparison results, which are currently missing.

Re: Thank you very much for your advice. We have now added comparison results over the spatial distribution in the abstract. Please see texts marked in blue (line 19-21).

 -        The section 1.2 in introduction needs to contain more updated AI-based evaluation articles and also to see how this literature can illustrate a way of showing the necessity of conducting this comparative study.

Re: Thank you very much for your suggestions. We have now added more updated studies of different arena to support the rigor of this research. Please see texts marked in blue in 1.2 section (line 145-159 and 163-168).

 -        Provide more details in the 2.4 sections in the methods. For example, How many raters? Are they trained and if so, how? How are these participants selected? How many pictures do they rate on average? How do you validate the rating results? Do you cross-validate them? Is one picture rated by multiple raters? Do you use an average score?

Re: Thank you very much for your valuable advice. Necessary explanations on the research procedure have been added in 2.4 marked in blue texts (please see line 275-279 and 281-284). Besides, there is no training required for participants since the question is quite simple.

-        The results needs to contain descriptive analysis over the street classifications results, and also, comparative analysis across four cities.

Re: Thank you very much for your suggestions. Descriptive analysis over the street classifications results is now added in 2.3. Since the following rating process was conducted based on the classification results. We believe this information are more suitable to be added in than in the results.

-        The discussion needs to contain the implications of how the comfort-related street indicators and their distribution within the cities can instruct future design. Use subtitles for the discussion if possible.

Re: Thank you very much for your valuable advice. Design implication concluded from the distributions of street visual comfort in cities and of the comfort-related street indicators are added in 4.1 and 4.2 (please see line 474-477 and 503-519).

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This study explores the visual comfort of streets using street view images and deep learning techniques. I like this study because it  is innovative and valuable. Traditional methods are difficult to examine the visual comfort of streets at a large scale, this study offers a solution for such research.

Author Response

Many thanks for your approval and your postive responses to our manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

The reviewed article addresses an issue increasingly studied by researchers which is the question of assessing the comfort/visual quality of a place, in this case the streets of four metropolitan areas in China (Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Guangzhou).

The article in terms of language is very well written. Also, the applied research technique is not objectionable and requires praise. Overall, in terms of narrative and methodological aspects, the reviewed text deserves a high rating.

Some reservations are raised on other issues. The authors a priori assumed that the adopted research method would correspond to human impressions. However, a person is a complex being who can evaluate the same place in different contexts and time periods differently. It may be worth pointing out in the article that the research method adopted and the results obtained, do not mean that every person will evaluate a place in the same way. In addition, the article in the Discussion lacks a polemic of the obtained research results with other types of results of similar research from other parts of the world.

Despite some polemics, the article should be considered very good. With minor changes, it is suitable for publication.

Author Response

Reviewer 3

The reviewed article addresses an issue increasingly studied by researchers which is the question of assessing the comfort/visual quality of a place, in this case the streets of four metropolitan areas in China (Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Guangzhou).

The article in terms of language is very well written. Also, the applied research technique is not objectionable and requires praise. Overall, in terms of narrative and methodological aspects, the reviewed text deserves a high rating.

Some reservations are raised on other issues. The authors a priori assumed that the adopted research method would correspond to human impressions. However, a person is a complex being who can evaluate the same place in different contexts and time periods differently. It may be worth pointing out in the article that the research method adopted and the results obtained, do not mean that every person will evaluate a place in the same way. In addition, the article in the Discussion lacks a polemic of the obtained research results with other types of results of similar research from other parts of the world.

Despite some polemics, the article should be considered very good. With minor changes, it is suitable for publication.

Re: Thank you very much for your approval and your valuable advice. The limitation on individual perceptive difference has been added in the 4.3 (please see line 531-538). In terms of implications from similar research, there is, to date, no exact the same research has been conducted on cities in other countries. That’s why we proposed that a cross-city or a cross-culture perspective is needed. However, we do have referring to previous studies and discussed the consistency and inconsistency about street visual comfort influential factors in 4.2. We have also added a similar study and compared its findings with those of our study in 4.1 (please see line 461-463).

Author Response File: Author Response.docx