Mapping and Assessing Effective Participatory Planning Processes for Urban Green Spaces in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Diverse Communities
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI think this is a well-written paper on an important topic and as such is definitely worth getting published. However, before that there are some issues that should be clarified first.
1. Clarify your research question in the last para of the introduction. The current wording does not give a clue about what is going to happen – however, when you start reading the paper everything is clear. So it should be possible to rephrase this para to state your question really clearly. BTW, there seems to be a typo in the caption of Fig 1.
2. Give the reader more information about your respondents – to make the reader sure that the differences are indeed cultural and not due to some other factors. Did the focus groups indeed have a similar composition in terms of professional or educational background, rural/urban, gender etc? That one group consisted of say male sheepfarmers from the countryside and another of female urban landscape architects and the differences are more related to this than the cultural background? That said: I like your results, they are important and look believable, but they should be presented in a very convincing way. This is crucial.
3. Consider using method names (or abbreviations), not numbers in Tables, similarly to hui and talanoa. Makes it more readable.
4. The term Pasifika might need an explanation (although intuitively understandable).
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe article deals with the topic of participatory planning of urban green areas in the context of a multicultural society with different habits. This topic is undoubtedly timely and worth exploring for better management of the common space. The goals of the research are clearly stated. Figure 1, which illustrates the research idea, does not convey the goals accurately. It shows a gap between participatory methods and the shape of public space. In contrast, if I am correct, this gap refers more to the need for overlapping diverse tools and building a participatory strategy to fit ethnically diverse backgrounds.
The literature review covers the most significant aspects of participatory methods and their problems but still lacks solid historical grounding. The subject of participatory planning is enormously rich and impossible to cover in a few paragraphs. Nonetheless, it seems important to mention the pioneers, like Jane Jacobs.
In Chapter 2, the description of globally used participatory tools is mixed with the description of local ethnic methods used in the study area. For better legibility, I suggest dividing those parts and highlighting what is international and local (e.g., by using different subheadings). Combining them (those tools) is an interesting and valuable aspect of your work and it is worth highlighting.
The research design is appropriate. An information that could be added is to explain the number of survey participants from each ethnic group. NZEU, Chinese, and Pasifika were represented by 9 members for each group, and the Maori by 3 persons. Why? Was this proportion determined by the percentage of the population? Another question is why was the Likert scale limited to 3 places only, not giving the respondents the possibility to define the selected tool as ineffective.
The research results are adequately discussed in relationship with the ethnic background of the groups. A significant outcome of the work is identifying ethnically determined preferences regarding the participatory methods. They are summarised in a table. An additional graphical scheme (diagram) could be interesting too.
It would be extremely interesting to see a proposed participatory planning framework for the study area that would combine tools preferred by different communities into one strategy. What would be the consequent levels of such a strategy? Would it provide a real chance for successful intercultural participation?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for your response, but my main criticism has remained unanswered. You are making quite brave conclusions based on a very small sample of respondents, and you fail to demonstrate that the small group who participated in your focus group interview did not consist of, for example, a shopkeeper, his wife, his brother and his mother-in-law. So what I want to see in this paper is another paragraph where you describe (within the limits of your ethical protocols of course) who were the people you managed to recruit: were they local activists, did they have different professional background, were family ties somehow involved etc etc. You have to convince the reader here that your conclusions (albeit, as I said previously, look good) are indeed trustworthy and are based on a little wider consensus than just one family or two farmer friends. I understand all difficulties with finding respondents for this sort of research (been in the same situation more than once), but still ...
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
