Study on the Spatial Arrangement of Urban Parkland under the Perspective of Equity—Taking Harbin Main City as an Example

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments and Suggestions for Authors:

The topic and the idea of the study is valuable. Generally, the presentation of most stages is developed, however there are weaknesses related to the selected aspects of the presented material.

1. The title is clear. Key words are well selected and in line with the topic.

2. The Abstract is well organized and includes main results of the study.

3. The Introduction includes main aspects related to conducted study, but the relation to available references (other studies) is rather limited. The formulation that based on "a large amount of literature, it is summarized that most of the study on the fairness of parkland is in a single direction..." (lines: 80-81) is insufficient when the Authors based only on about 10 references. This section needs some development based on more international literature to present current state of the research field and create wider background for presented study and readers.

The way of references citation should follow the rules of the journal.

The aim of the study is not formulated – there is only a kind of short description of the study idea (lines: 86-101). The selected aims are somehow hidden in the following subsections of the manuscript what is very difficult to find. The aim(s) must be easy to find and understand by readers, listed i.e. at the end of introductory part of the manuscript.

4. Section 2. “Selection of Survey Region and Data Sources” is clear.

5. Section 3. “Research Framework and Methodology” is much developed and generally has appropriate order, also includes most important elements of used methods, what explains how the study was conducted. Thr form of description could be a bit more methodological.

At the same time, the Authors use different tenses in the following parts of description, sometimes they inform that something “is” used, and sometimes it “was”. It must be unified.

6. Section 4. “Results and Analyses” should be rather called “Analyses and Results” to follow the proposed order of data presentation. Generally, this section is much developed, includes main and important information and is supported by comments, also graphs and figures.

7. Section 5. “Conclusion and Discussion” should also have other order – Discussion must be separated from Conclusions in my opinion, otherwise is a kind of continuous description and addition of repeated points (1,2,3) in following sections is confusing.

Discussion itself needs definitely development and the relations to other studies/references must be added to explain the similarities/differences of presented study in line with the wider background, thus the novelty of conducted study. Discussion must follow directly main aspects studied by Authors.

8. Conclusions – they must be added, and they should follow step by step all formulated aims, otherwise the relations to obtained results will be missing. The present form of their description in section 5 is not clear and difficult to find – this part of the manuscript must be very easy to understand by readers.

Recommendations can be included, but at the same time they cannot take over the role of conclusions - they should constitute the next step after formulation of clear conclusions.

Summing up, almost all sections of the manuscript needs some revision – some more clear presentation and addition of missed elements. Regarding the idea and the scope of the study is valuable and interesting, my suggestion is to present all stages in a more methodological manner following i.e. IMRAD structure, to make the presentation more professional.

Others:

- there are missed some dots and spaces between selected words, brackets with reference number must use the same fonts in the whole text, etc.

I can’t recommend publication of the manuscript in its present form – it needs major revision.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please find my comments in the attached file. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

In my opinion there is a need for extensive editing, especially in grammar, for the manuscript to be published. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The study of the spatial distribution of urban green space is an important topic. This study takes Harbin as an example and conducts a detailed analysis of the distribution characteristics of urban parkland from the perspectives of spatial equality and social equality. The methods and results are well presented. I have several suggestions for revising the manuscript.

1) The Discussion section must be improved. The current version of the manuscript only gives some recommendation discussion. This is not enough. The authors should discuss the findings of this work more.

2) The authors sometimes used 'urban parkland' and sometimes used 'park green space'. It is necessary to unify the expression. 

3) These phrases should be avoided when submitting to international journals. Such as 'Western cities', 'foreign studies', and 'domestic studies' (Line 49, 51, 59)

4) Line 18, what does 'urban green parks' mean? Does it mean the parks with vegetation coverage?

5) Both AOI (e.g., residential area in Figure 1) and population grid data were mentioned in the data sources part. How the AOI data (e.g., residential area) was used in the subsequent analysis?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I appreciate all works done by the Authors, some suggestions has been introduced.

The Introduction has been improved, what developed the background and the present state of the study.

The aim of the study is still not clear in my opinion. The subsection called “1.1 Research purpose” has a form of short presentation of main steps of the study – the Authors inform what is the research object, types of analyses they used, and also inform that the “paper has conducted a comprehensive and in-depth study on the layout and supply and demand relationship of urban parkland, etc. But there is still no short and easy to understand information why they conduct this study. If the main aim was to e.g. to study layout and supply and demand relationship of urban parkland to discover some special relations or improve something, this must be very clearly presented and easy to find and understand by readers.

The correction in methods presentations and description of main results are clear.

Discussion still has very limited relation to other studies - Authors added some information about methods used by 3 other authors (references 42, 43 44), however the results of their individual new approach are not discussed e.g. with limitations of other studies' results – the reader still doesn't know why this approach is better except that it incorporates a few more aspects into the assessment method. These generalizations reduce the value of the study.

Conclusions – many of them repeat some general information presented in previous parts of the manuscript. A formulation such as “This study can be used to summarize the parkland layout and balance the disadvantaged groups to enjoy parkland resources…” is rather obvious, while the conclusions should be more deep.

Some more important aspects are hidden or not clearly formulated in this quite long text.

Summing up, the general presentation of conducted study has been improved, but the form of generalizations used by Authors in sections such as Discussion and Conclusions is a weakness. Taking into account this gaps, the Authors did not sufficiently highlight the value of the conducted study. The manuscript still needs some improvement in my opinion.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is the revised version of the manuscript. I would like to congratulate the authors for dealing with my feedback constructively and significantly improving their manuscript. I am now satisfied with the current version and I am happy to recommend it for publication. I suggest that the authors have one last proofread to make sure there aren't any missing commas and misspelled words. 

Looking forward to seeing this published. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf