Talk:Shopping centres

Final assessment

For the moment about 90 point as some formal requirements are still abandoned. Good luck with finishing the text!

Peer review of the case study (by Caroline Reibe)

Criteria	High/Medium/Low
Content	8
Context	7
Practical relevance	8
Focus	8
Clarity	8
Critical approach	10
Elaborateness (commitment)	8
Individual input & risk-taking	8
Reader's attractiveness	10
Formal features	8
Total (points)	83

Written Comments for Author(s)

Dear Zuzka,

first of all I have to say that I really enjoyed reading your case study! You have chosen an interesting topic of high importance for our consumption society. The massive construction of shopping centres has many consequences not only on the people in the direct surroundings but also on the environment and the resulting traffic problems. Your topic qualifies for case study writing because it has a local character – like shopping centres near Prague – and also offers perspectives for a more global view, for example the influence of the Western Europe in terms of consumption needs. As you can see in the upper chart I have tried to give you points for every of the ten criteria. To review your text was very difficult for me, because it was my first time writing a peer-review. I will now start to give you my concrete comments on your text-parts.

I had some problems to understand your title correctly. Could it be possible that a word is missing in your headline (“Heart of Europe Stifling Under Concrete ?) and that “Foreword” did slip into the wrong line? Your part 1.1 “Foreword” was a very good and brief introduction to the topic. I liked the quick overview with naming of the different points of view you will present and your development of your research question. I especially liked your very figurative comparison “that every citizen has their own square metre for shopping”. I think that you should put a reference mark when you are mentioning Sýkora for the first time (“Sýkora (2006) warns that …”).

In your chapter 1.2 “About shopping centres in general” I think you missed a reference mark after the very good overall definition by I. Smolová. A hint for your future case studies: When I finished my writing process, I always look if there are any “…” parts without reference link. You sometimes forgot adding the reference link. In your next paragraph I think you have made a language mistake in your first sentence. “Shopping centres did exist before 1989 – every citizen then new (knew?)…”. Such language mistakes are totally normal for all of us. We all aren’t native speaker in English. For the structure you could think about making a chapter 1.2 named “Shopping centres” and then a subchapter like 1.2.1 “General remarks” and 1.2.2 “Special Focus on Prague”. I really liked your graphic about shopping centres but I missed a few additional sentences that describe the graphic in words.

Chapter 1.3 about legislation was interesting to read. You introduced it by naming three important laws. Then you wrote “all these include general principles …”, but you didn’t name one. I think it would be nice to give some examples for general principles. In 1.3.1 “policy and planning” you highlight the complex political system very well. It could be nice if you already start to give your own estimation about the current political system. For example you could raise questions like: “Who has the right and the power to decide important issues?” or “What is the effect on the decision process if different governmental organisations do not have a fixed hierarchy?”, “Will they decide anything, or will this state lead to standstill?” And I have some minor formal things: After your quote “Prague endeavours to achieve a high quality…” there is no reference mark. The second thing is that you should check the spaces between your headlines and the text passages, because they aren’t always the same. I also think that a headline is not the perfect place for a reference mark ([8] and [9]). What do you mean by “City Development Authority Prague,…[9] that is written in bold letters? I think it is the reference, isn’t it? But why is it placed like a sub-headline at the beginning of part 1.3.2?

In chapter 1.4 you name very important problems connected to commercialization. And again you used additional information in form of charts. I found your chart of the impact of retail construction on traffic highly interesting. That was new information for me and it was good to have this problem presented by real rates. If you like to upgrade this part a little bit further, you could enlarge it a bit. I mean that you could provide some additional sentences by describing the charts for example. And one formal hint: Your figure numeration is different from the order of appearance. I would say as a summary for chapter 1.4 that I really liked it because you offered very good aspects of problems that go along with the shopping centre construction.

Your chapter 1.5 “Conflict” is dedicated to two examples of citizen protest supported by NGOs. It was a good point to mention that there were protests even when they weren’t successful in the end. You could have gone a bit deeper into analysis why the citizens and NGOs didn’t succeed at last and show a concrete example. I think the reference for the picture should be only given as a link [15] because that would be more standardised. Maybe you should also give a reference mark after the quotes instead of the reference in brackets. But I must say that I am a bit unsure with using the right reference style myself. I normally use another system when I write German academic texts.

Inchapter 1.6 “Future development” you have written a good conclusion and offer a hopeful future view. I really liked your outlook questions. I think you could have spent some more sentences on your own opinion. You could widen your analysis and discussion part a bit. I think that you have great personal things to say. Have a heart to do a personal comment on an analysed case.

Your chapter 1.7 “Research question” offers a good and brief summary about your case study development process. You name again very important aspects.

To sum up: You have written a good text that offers insight view in important aspects concerning the problem of shopping centre construction. I really liked the local level of your approach. I missed a little bit the global aspect. You mentioned at the beginning the influence of the Western countries but - as a proposal- you could have written a little chapter about the influence of the consumption industry on the Czech Republic for example. A good point was that you used pictures and charts to support your text. I appreciated it because it visualised some aspects. I think the correct reference usage is quite difficult (I also need to practice), but look again into the manual and adjust some of them. Although your text was very nice, it could have been a little bit longer. As I wrote above, you could have inserted more explanation, interpretation or discussion parts. Your English was very good to read!

So I like to say that I really enjoyed reading your text and would say that it is acceptable with minor modifications. Thanks to you, for writing about an interesting topic. I will now be aware about this topic and look if something changes concerning the construction boom in Germany, too.

Best regards,
Caro

General Recommendation for articles (highlight one option):

- Acceptable with minor modifications

--Reibe 21:08, 6 March 2011 (CET)

Possible copyright violation problem

Dear Zuzka, I am afraid there could be problems with violation of copyright law on your page. In principle, picture is an author work and if you use picture in your article, even with correct description of its origin is similar as you use whole article from some journal in your work - not as if you cite only small part.

Maybe you have permission of the authors of the pictures to use them - if not, I would reccomend you to use other pictures. As VCSEwiki is licenced by Creative Commons BY-SA licence, you can use without problems any picture from Wikipedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org - there are more than 9 millions of them there. BTW. VCSEwiki is interconnected with Commons - so you can include picture from Commons very easy - it is enough to write in your text [[file:name_of_image_in_commons.jpg]] and image will be there.

For example:

BTW: There is some technical problem in VCSEwiki at this moment when you use image from Commons with name which uses diacritics and you want to make smaller immage. Eg. [[File:Praha Centrum Černý Most.jpg|thumb]] does not work. Sorry for that. If you want to use such image, you have to download it and upload it to VCSEwiki.

I am not sure, but probably also some images from Flickr are under Creative Commons license and can be used, but I am not sure if all of them are.

For the table - I know that tables in wiki are relatively complicated, so I had created table for you from your image.

For the two graphs - the easy (relatively) solution is to use data from your source, but to create your own graph - than you cite only necessary part = data from original source and it is according to author law.

Nice day

--Jiří Dlouhý 09:26, 8 March 2011 (CET)

Comments on the almost final version of the text

Hi Zuzana,

you have done a lot of work, and I value your effort very high. My remarks are only for future, so that you improve in writing:

• you have not focused on the issue sufficiently – that would spare your effort. If you have spoken e.g. about development of the infrastructure, you need not mention legislation almost at all. You could say that this development was in past few years based on free market principles, with some regulation (legislation, of course), and some influence of citizens. The result is so and so, and has environmental, social, and also economical consequences. It might have some benefits as well – you should show them.
• if the genre is a case study, you might have more concentrated on a real case, e.g. situation in Prague. You could start with it, or only illustrate some general trends after you have outlined them.
• you are afraid to have strong conclusions. If you are speaking about the overconsumption as part of your conclusions, it is not good – we could do little about that. You “play back” the responsibility on the citizens who actually protest. And they are corrupted by low prices as well.
• Your research question is not actually research – it could be hardly methodologically captured. Your question is a question for policy makers. You might pose questions like: what are environmental consequences – transport, soil degradation, landscape factors etc.? What is cost/benefit ratio (in terms of social etc. benefits)? What are driving forces of non-regulated development and could they be abandoned?
• Finally, be careful about the copyright of your images!

Best regards

jana

March, 3rd, 2011

Literature review

Well done literature review: includes meta-reflection that could be used in further stqages of your research procedure.

I suggest that you concentrate in next step on description of the phenomenon using information from your resources. Then, you could write in a foreword (or amend your already written foreword) that this problem has many reasons: specify them as psychological, behavioral, economical etc. In conclusion you could say something about its negative effects.

You still need to decide what you consider to be the main lesson learned from your case study. Something that you could share with the rest of the world pointing out that specific conditions described (CR situation) provide some valuable experience for the others. Economic and other reasons are global, but concrete manifestations have to do something with our conditions.

--Jana Dlouha 18:48, 22 January 2011 (CET)