Which Residential Clusters of Walkability Affect Future Population from the Perspective of Real Estate Prices in the Osaka Metropolitan Area?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors
I am very happy to have the opportunity to read your very interesting article. I hope that a few of my remarks will help to make it even better. Here they are:
- The manuscript entitled “Which Residential Clusters of Walkability Affect Future Population from the Perspective of Real Estate Prices in the Osaka Metropolitan Area?” is well-written and has a research and analytic character. The Authors should be appreciated for the research reliability and methods used. The strong points of this article are also its layout and the clarity of presented contents.
- In my opinion, the work should have clearly separated, independent sections: Introduction and Literature review (Background). In the Introduction section, please present the aims of the article, research hypotheses, or research questions. Moreover, please write to whom the article is directed. Finally, please add a separate paragraph to describe the structure of the article.
- The Discussion section should be enriched with conclusions from research conducted by other researchers. The material presented in the Results section is very rich. Now, in the Discussion section, this material should be confronted with the results of similar studies described in the literature on the subject. After this confrontation of the authors' results with those of other researchers, the conclusions should be drawn.
- The subject literature needs to be expanded. This will certainly happen when the Authors expand their studies in the Literature review section and in the Discussion section.
- Researchers recognize the limitations of their research and write about them in the Conclusions section. It is commendable. This fact proves the high reliability and scientific maturity of the Authors of the presented article.
- What theoretical and practical implications does the text prepared by the authors have? It would be worth mentioning them in the Conclusion section.
- In the end, just a little thing. The authors place tables, drawings, and photos in the text. However, the source of the information is nowhere to be found. If they were created as a result of own work, please mark it, for example: "Source: own study".
I hope that the indicated remarks will help the Authors to improve their text so that the work will be published. Good luck!
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
We appreciate the reviewer for the generous comment on the manuscript. We believe that the manuscript is now suitable for publication in Sustainability and look forward to hearing from you concerning your editorial decision.
Yours sincerely
Haruka Kato
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The article is interesting and the subject is worthy of research. In my opinion, if the authors incorporate some minor improvements, the article could be considered for publication in the journal. Consequently, I recommend a minor review. Below I detail the issues that must be addressed by the authors.
- The quality of the images in general and especially those of Figures 3 to 7 should be improved by incorporating higher resolution images.
- The scientific discussion section is a bit poor and scarce. In addition, a certain self-critical approach is missing, analyzing the limitations of the study carried out and proposing which issues could be improved in future lines of research on the subject.
- The concluding section is too long and has too many bibliographic references (which does not make much sense in this type of section). Authors should rethink this section in a more synthetic way so that readers can simply assess their interest in the article by taking a look at this section.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
We appreciate the reviewer for the generous comment on the manuscript. We believe that the manuscript is now suitable for publication in Sustainability and look forward to hearing from you concerning your editorial decision.
Yours sincerely
Haruka Kato
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
A valuable piece of research. However, the conclusion is not clear. Sentences as "… there is a need for housing policy for apartments for the sale in the business center cluster" and “use housing policies that encourage people to change their residence types to apartments for sale” has no meaning for me. It may happen that Japanese Real Estate sector is different and not well known for worldwide real estate community. From the perspective of the international market, it is the sole decision of the owner whether he/she wish to sell or wish to rent out the owned property. So, it is suggested to give some market background for readers and formulate the conclusion according to that.
Other comments:
- Definition of the locations/clusters missing, nomenclatures as “sprawl”, “old NT” or “mining industry” are unclear. How residents are present in “mining industry” or “agriculture” area?
- Why “shops for rent” are in the sample? Is walkability considered an issue related to shops? It must be explained.
- The data were used came from a dataset “At Home”. It is not clear if those data were transactional (real) data or offers. In case of residential offers, Authors should give relation of used dataset to the real transaction data.
- Authors include into their analysis selling price and rental fee as well. It is not clear how they transformed the rental fee to selling price, what kind of yield was used for this transformation.
And something strange about the walkability index. Authors suggest that the WI is lower in bay areas and in mountain areas than in the cities. Where people are walking? I suppose outdoor activity mainly concentrated in mountains rather than streets. Please comment this in the text.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
We appreciate the reviewer for the generous comment on the manuscript. We believe that the manuscript is now suitable for publication in Sustainability and look forward to hearing from you concerning your editorial decision.
Yours sincerely
Haruka Kato
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
In my opinion, the text presented by the authors in its current form is not suitable for publication.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
We appreciate the reviewer for the generous comment on the manuscript. We believe that the manuscript is now suitable for publication in Sustainability and look forward to hearing from you concerning your editorial decision.
Yours sincerely
Haruka Kato
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
With modification, suggested to accept.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
We appreciate the reviewer for the generous comment on the manuscript. We believe that the manuscript is now suitable for publication in Sustainability and look forward to hearing from you concerning your editorial decision.
Yours sincerely
Haruka Kato
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
I stand by my decision on the case.Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
We appreciate the reviewer for the generous comment on the manuscript. We believe that the manuscript is now suitable for publication in Sustainability and look forward to hearing from you concerning your editorial decision.
Yours sincerely
Haruka Kato
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
