Engagement with Urban Soils Part II: Starting Points for Sustainable Urban Planning Guidelines Derived from Maya Soil Connectivity

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The subject is interesting and well presented, but I would recommend that in future the authors should not present papers as part 1 and part 2, but to try and create only one comprehensive research paper.

Author Response

Many thanks for the positive response to our work presented in this paper. Indeed, we have specifically discussed the possibility of publishing this paper as a diptych in the same issue prior to submitting. Given the lack of concrete criticism, we believe the reviewer ultimately agrees that this paper does present a comprehensive argument. However, it is also part of a larger narrative. Regrettably, there is relatively little flexibility in the formats of textual academic publishing and their crediting, meaning that arguments arguably best presented together get chopped up into pieces that fit the mold. To us, later it often feels contrived that another paper on the same subject is published with only a minor incremental change, which likely was part of the same research effort. In this case, we felt two more substantial arguments could be presented in two separate papers, but wanted to strongly alert the audience to the larger effort and narrative this forms part of. Meanwhile, both parts may also address slightly different audiences, with this second part being more strongly focused on delivering critical review and ideas for urban practitioners.

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very interesting paper that argues that insights from the level of interaction and integration of green spaces and soils in Maya settlements provide insights for the integration of green spaces and soil connectivity in urban areas today. However, the structure of the paper could be substantially improved, and some of its key points (for example the focus on 'edges' - see below) are not clear until near the end of the paper.

This issue is evident in the abstract, which could be much more succinct and should summarise methods and conclusions rather the list topics that are discussed in the text. For example, the abstract mentions 'habitat architectures' - a relevant concept for this argument, but one that is not explained until lines 410-11 on p. 11. This is a long time for the reader to wait for an explanation of this concept. Similarly, although the introduction makes it clear that this is the second part of an argument that starts with Vis et al. (2023 Part 1), the first part of this argument should be better summarised so that the current paper can be understood as a stand-alone article. Note too that the introduction assumes prior knowledge of McBratney et al. (2014), which also needs to be summarised (see lines 76-77).

As with the abstract, the introduction could be substantially shorter and could explain the paper's aims and framing much more clearly. Lines 116-119 do this well, as do lines 339-346, so worth saying this right at the start. There are several lines and even whole paragraphs that could be simply cut from the intro or moved to the discussion.

The same is true of section 2 on soil connectivity and urban environments, which spends too long saying what will be argued here rather than presenting the argument (particularly the para beginning on line 157). More confusing, this section relies on concepts that have yet to be outlined, most obviously 'edges', which is noted on line 163, but personally I didn't really understand this argument until lines 710-711 of the conclusion. The legend to figure 2 helped substantially to explain aspects of this focus on edges, but this too requires a lot of work on the part of the reader.

Given that figures 1 and 2 both demonstrate that different types of urban exposed soils can be identified and quantified (see also p. 13), it is not clear why we are not presented with some metrics for this. This, of course, may perfectly reasonable be outside the scope of this paper, but if so it would be helpful to explicitly state this.

The listing of insights in the conclusions is very clear and works very well.

In short, this is an interesting and insightful paper, but it would greatly benefit the reader to improve the structure.

A minor point, but when discussing shifting baselines on lines 518-520, McHarg's (1969) 'Design with Nature' would seem to be an highly relevant reference here (see also Pauly on 'shifting baseline syndrome').

 

Author Response

Many thanks for the insightful review of our paper. We note that there is disagreement between reviewers on the organisation of the paper, with two reviewers complimenting our work. However, we welcome the opportunity to improve the abstract of the paper. We have made revisions to the abstract both with a view to shorten it, as well as to state more clearly how we have worked and what specifically we contribute and conclude in this paper. This should also further underline that this paper is conceptual and represents a critical review, and as such may discuss but does not apply empirical methods which require explanation.

 

The reviewer highlights the need to define ‘habit architecture’ in the abstract. However, in our view the definition of (new) terms which the paper critically engages with are usually reserved for the main body of the paper.

 

The reviewer claims that the importance of ‘edges’ does not become clear until the end of the paper. We checked this claim, and found that edges are introduced and explained in the third paragraph of the first substantive section (2) of our paper.

 

In recognising that this is Part II of a two-part argument, the reviewer suggests that “so that the current paper can be understood as a stand-alone article” both part I and McBratney et al. 2014 should be better summarised. The reviewer could not know that we have agreed with Land that these papers are to be published alongside each other in the same issue, as a diptych. As such, there is nearly no physical separation between the papers and cross-referencing should be very easy indeed (especially thanks to the Open Access nature of these publications). Crucial, for us, is that the reviewer does not offer insight into what currently cannot be effectively understood as a stand-alone argument. We checked the need to offer further detail in summary and found that we effectively summarise and position ourselves vis-a-vis Part I between: "The absence and inadequate treatment of soils ..." and  "Therefore, in this Part II ....". We even further specify this relation and repeat McBratney et al. 2014's core terminological contribution between: "McBratney et al. (2014) conceptualised five dimensions ...." and "... we can start to address how these insights can be transferred to the realm of policy." As authors we feel it would be disingenuous to keep repeating the same summary verbatim in separate publications. There is further detail on McBratney et al. in Part I, which can and should be consulted there. Since most of the introduction is already dedicated to both introduce the crucial terms and contributions from McBratney et al. 2014 and Part I, we don’t think adding even further detail is warranted. The reviewer’s comment helped us identify that ‘soil connectivity’ remained undefined in Part II. To this effect we added the shorthand descriptive definition used in Part I to the citation here.

 

In light of the previous point, the reviewer’s claim that “the introduction could be substantially shorter and could explain the paper's aims and framing much more clearly. […] There are several lines and even whole paragraphs that could be simply cut from the intro or moved to the discussion.” seems contradictory. Since most of the introduction consists of the summaries the reviewer would desire, it would surely be counterproductive to cut or move these. We do agree with the reviewer that there is an opportunity to bring the point articulated in lines 116-119 forward to improve our statement of purpose early on (and before launching fully into summarising and positioning). We have made an edit to this effect at the end of the first paragraph. We feel the further specification of lines 339-346 are better exactly where they appear, and furthermore pertain more strongly to detailed discussion in Part I.

 

The reviewer critiques the organisation of section 2, which is the first substantive part of the paper, and thus where the first crucial observations and concepts are introduced. Unsurprisingly, this is where edges are introduced as a concept to later build on. So, it’s not that this section ‘relies on concepts yet to be outlined’, it outlines some concepts later relied on. The italics used for ‘edges’ the first time this occurs, further underlines their importance. It is already in the remainder of this same section that Figure 2 is introduced and therefore more meat is put on the bones of the concept of ‘edges’. According to the reviewer this “helped substantially to explain aspects of this focus on edges”. Although the figure and caption may take some work to understand, we feel this is to be expected from a new idea, currently merely at an early stage of conception, yet to actually be put in empirical practice. The fact that a further reviewer was highly enthusiastic about this figure, we take as an encouragement that our explanation within the space of one (early) section of the paper is adequate. We appreciate that the key conclusion of their value is fully digested in the conclusion. This clarity is achieved thanks to the further reviews and method considerations presented in this paper. We thank the reviewer that, in this respect, the conclusion is doing exactly what we want: offer concentrated take-away points to inform further work, be that in research or (policy) practice.

 

We understand the reviewer’s desire, with regards to the presentation of Figure 1 and 2, for us to be even more explicit that this is not an empirical paper with original data generation and processing. To this effect, we now indicate in introducing Figure 2 on line 251 that this is purely an illustration of an empirical opportunity. Similarly in line 209, we now emphasise that actual mapping efforts to quantify urban soils are beyond the current scope.

 

We thank the reviewer once again for welcoming how we conceive our conclusions. We feel this is a very good endorsement of how we intended the contributions of this paper to take effect. While our reviews of structure have been minor, we think they represent improvements to better guide readers’ expectations and comprehension of the objectives and nature of this paper.

 

We followed-up on the reviewer’s suggestion of McHarg 1969 and Pauly 1995, and found considerable confusion about the exact lineage of the term ‘shifting baseline’. In our reading of McHarg 1969 we failed to identify how this work could be called the origin of the term. Even the term baseline or baseline data does not seem to be discussed. We found that especially in the disciplinary of (landscape) architecture, McHarg is regularly associated with the origin of this idea. However, when following up on some of these citations, the passages of the book cited had either nothing to do with it, or seemed to refer to the general sense that for McHarg it was important to plan one’s design interventions with an understanding of what the original natural situation and conditions of an area had been (especially the symposium review by Holzman 2016). To us it seems perhaps more appropriate to cite McHarg as the origin of the notion of nature-based-solutions, as seen in Ellis (2019, Nature as Designer: Emancipating Nonhuman Ecologies in an Increasingly Human World). We concede that the idea of a foundational understanding of the ‘natural’ state of an area in a historical sense, could spur on the idea of ecological baseline data. Importantly, though, it seems that the idea of shifting baselines has begun to lead a life of its own. The literature we cite makes no effort to cite the origin. They cite a paper in Science (Hartig & Kahn 2016), which in turn also does not cite the origin of the idea (neither Pauly, nor McHarg). We did find reference to Pauly as the origin of the specific idea of ‘shifting baseline syndrome’, so framed as a condition of thinking, in Soga & Gaston (2018), colleagues of Hartig & Kahn. We then found a doctoral thesis (Jones 2016) connecting up the origins of the idea with both McHarg (in the sense of the need for ecological baseline data) and Pauly (1995), who Jones concludes, as do Soga & Gaston (2018), is the origin of the idea that eventually takes flight across several fields. Jones cites one additional piece of literature published between 1969 and 1995 (the gap in provenance of the idea) by Kramer (1976) on air quality, who reports on ‘sliding baselines’ of deterioration. Entertaining as this intellectual whodunit was, we feel it isn’t in line with the arguments in our paper to cite McHarg, but have clarified the wider origin of this idea, tracing it back to Pauly (1995) with our citations.

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is very well organised, presented and written. It builds on a stream of work on the contemporary relevance of Mayan archaeological and related records that the authors and others have produced over a number of years, extending it by addressing the particular importance of urban soils and using Mayan historical analogues to explain their relevance to current urban sustainability planning.

I have no major comments, but several specific ones that would help sharpen particular points and help to make key elements of the argument stand out more visibly:

lines 57-58: Adding a couple of sentences here to build a bridge between these 2 paragraphs: say briefly how/why this is relevant/important - and for what?

83-85: Yes, but why do this (to match the how)?

113-116: It's not just information that will be required but 'political will' and drive - what benefits and how, etc

133-135: indeed, but many might say, so what? - need to make explicit.

170-172: As expressed, this seems to imply an a priori affection for soils per se, but isn't it mainly a 'derived demand' for productive value of the soil in UPA, water retention, etc?

178: which activities take place between buildings?

179-182: ah - here it says what, but not as prominently as I would expect.

228-231: Indeed - could link to SDG 11 indicator on open space here, rather than leaving all such connections to later sections.

234-236: link explicitly here to urban and peri-urban agriculture - which is also important in Mayan historical urban landscapes

p.8: Figure 2 and caption are excellent - really helpful.

307-309: say whether the NUA mentions soils per se? The SDGs don't.

347-350: yes, but presumably these must vary by soil type and agro-ecological zone etc.

383: periodic (not periodical)

401-403: but they rarely address soil explicitly.

435-438: This is a - perhaps the - key point but is somehow lost in the middle of the text here.

453-455: Indeed - but SDG 11.7 is the now most widely used approach, so mentioning its indicators would be helpful.

467ff: can you give more prominence to some of these points as sub-sub-headings perhaps? They seem a bit lost in the text at present.

600: Norwich, UK.

642: 'broadly carried' - reword for clarity

661-2: worth making explicit that sustainable development goals here are general propositions, hence lower case first letters, rather than the 17 SDGs of the Agenda 2030.

671ff: These seem fine but there seems to me to be one missing step/link, namely that a fairly major revamp of urban planning will be required - varying in nature from national context to national context - perhaps alignment with the SDGs and NUA can provide such an opportunity ...

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for their praise and take it as an encouragement of the value of our work over the past few years exploring this cross-disciplinary topic.

 

Lines 57–58: The comments of the reviewer concurred with another reviewer and we have revised the ending of our first paragraph to make sure the relevance/importance and objective is more explicitly stated early on.

 

Lines 83–85: we revised the opening of this paragraph to make it more explicit ‘why’ the use of the archaeological evidence for the Maya model of urban soil connectivity is necessary.

 

Lines 113–116: we agree on this issue with the reviewer. However, the exact means of influencing and changing ‘political will’ is outside of the current scope of the paper. A key reason for this is that political organisation and operation is not directly comparable and detailed Maya evidence for this is lacking. As such, we cannot know whether there was urban planning and who determined this among the lowland Maya, nor whether soil was directly addressed in planning concerns. In part I we do approach ‘drive’ and ‘will’ in a non-political sense, in terms of identifying stakeholder groups and environmental attitudes. We believe that in healthy democracies politics should ultimately listen to the will of the people. As such, the stimulation of a culture of soil care that Part I propagates should give a broad stakeholder group participating in soil management a voice with political influence. In this paper, we seek to equip urban planning and design practitioners with knowledge and methods that would enable them to more effectively address soil connectivity.

 

Lines 133–135: One lives in hope that statements and observations like this won’t make readers go ‘so what’. We think, however, that the reviewer wishes us to make the problem of the urban land-use paradox more explicit. We have now addressed this through a small revision.

 

Lines 170–172: this remark leaves us slightly confused, since we do not directly refer to UPA here, and while this is undeniably relevant, it would not overly reductive to suggest that Maya urbanism equates to UPA. We refer to Evans et al. 2021, because here empirical evidence for urban soil practices is discussed far more broadly. In the next sentences, too, more insight is offered in the kind of utility of soil. Meanwhile, Part I develops the argument for the valuing of soil from a cultural and knowledge perspective. I don’t see how we currently suggest an a priori affection for soil per se, though it is beyond debate that soils are being maintained for the ecological benefits, broadly conceived, derived from them. The alternative would suggest soil-fetishism, which seems a slightly absurd suggestion.

 

178, 179–182: We suspect the reviewer is referring to the absence of discussion of mundane activities of everyday social life. We feel such discussion is beyond the scope of this paper. With our phrasing we emphasise both the presence and the role of soils in activities of everyday production and consumption, which largely takes place between built volumes rather than in them (as is customary in contemporary urban life, certainly in temperate climate models). The direct relationship between inside and outside is paramount, and also offer frequent opportunities with soil engagement and management (see cited literature). Without knowing what kind of detail the reviewer feels specifically is lacking, we think the current formulation and citations cover this adequately.

 

228–231: Although this is not the section where we explicitly discuss policy vehicles (we later focus on the more specific NUA rather than the SDGs), we acknowledge the opportunity and have added a sentence referring to how insecure green space classifications hamper planning towards indicator 11.7.1.

 

234–236: We have added a sentence referring to the quite comprehensive paper of Nicholls et al. (2022), already cited later on in the paper, to make the important connection between UPA and benefits to soil maintenance. We also cite our own efforts in Evans et al. 2021, which engage more elaborately with Maya soil practices as related to UPA.

 

307–309: This phrasing reproduces our findings in this regard published in Part I. It states that soils ‘are absent or subsumed’ in NUA. This means, as one should surmise, that soils are not mentioned ‘by name’, which we consider a significant oversight, but that their importance is implicit. It feels somewhat unjust to call out NUA for ignoring soils altogether, but in Part I we do articulate the negative and unhelpful effects of mentioning certain elements, like water and air, but not soil explicitly, permitting subsequent oversights in policy and practice and suggesting they may be of subordinate importance. In the present paper, especially when published as a Part II with reference to Part I, we don’t feel it is warranted to repeat this assessment in more detail here.

 

347–350: we agree with the reviewer and have added ‘locally or regionally’ to specify what is considered to be ‘adequate’.

 

383: corrected.

 

401–403: Correct. To this effect in line 311–12 we already state: “the treatment of soils in local planning policies of individual cities globally remains uneven and imbalanced (Teixeira da Silva et al. 2018).” And in line 320 we state: “In spite of the general absence of soil in local planning policies”. In line 401 we are stating the power and governing influence planning policies do hold, despite identified shortcomings.

 

435–438: We agree with the reviewer this recommendation is crucial. Therefore we added a paragraph break to give it a more prominent position and start the new paragraph by repeating the point.

453–455: this is a constructive suggestion, so we added a sentence expressing how SDG target 11.7 perpetuates an indiscriminate treatment of green, open, and public space in policy.

 

467ff: We considered this in light of the overall organisation of the paper both at drafting stage and now, upon suggestion of the reviewer again. Currently, the sections 3.1–3.3 are similarly weighted in length. In fact, 3.1 is longer than the ones suggested to be broken up in subheadings. Upon re-reading these sections, we confirmed that they were conceived as integrated arguments, brought to a common conclusion. It would feel unbalanced to introduce a further hierarchical level of subdivision to separate out the shorter sections and give prominence to some, but not all topics or methods, which eventually are processed in combination or translated into ‘starting points’ in our conclusion.

 

600: corrected.

 

642: this wording was first used in line 121. We have reworded the sentence to more closely match this apparently unproblematic turn of phrase earlier on.

 

661–2: point taken. We’ve added specification to this phrase in brackets.

 

671ff: as the reviewer has noted, much depends on political will, and instruments to generate or direct political will are outside of our current scope and would likely benefit from separate treatments by specialists on the politics of policy formation and implementation. There is also a slight contradiction in the suggestion that alignment with the SDGs or NUA could help, since both Part I and this Part II of our argument heavily critique and highlight the shortcomings of these advisory instruments with respect to soils. While we can see the argument that the SDGs and NUA have the ability to align and thus create similarities in policy, the question presents itself whether this is already happening, which could be assessed by a repeat of the kind of policy review study carried out by Teixeira da Silva et al. 2018. We agree that it is probable that urban planning policies would need to be rethought and reorganised and that to do so would be subject to political will and be particular from (policy and territorial) context to context. It therefore seems appropriate that we offer starting points that could conceptually inform leverage points and methods as instruments that permit flexibility to be moulded in each context (and according to political will).