2025 Award Results
Congratulations to 2025 Award Winners!
We are pleased to announce the recipients of the Planning Excellence Awards 2025, recognizing excellence in planning, urban design, environmental resilience, and community engagement across international contexts.
This year’s awards attracted a diverse and highly competitive pool of submissions from around the world, reflecting the richness of international planning practice. The awardees demonstrate outstanding innovation, social impact, and professional rigor.
The APA International Division congratulates all award recipients and commended teams for their exemplary contributions to advancing inclusive, resilient, and community-centered planning worldwide.
Special Excellence Awards Winners
Excellence in Public Involvement Award
Totsuka Pre-Disaster Planning Collective, Shinjuku Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan
Totsuka Community-Based Collaborative Recovery Activity Research Group
Pre-Disaster Planning Education, Shinjuku Totsuka is a result of decade-long, community-led effort that treats disaster preparedness as part of everyday place-making in a dense Tokyo neighborhood. The Totsuka Community-Based Collaborative Recovery Activity Research Group (TCCRG)—a coalition of residents, neighborhood associations, practitioners, educators, and researchers—has revived and updated a pre-disaster recovery vision first developed in 2010–2013, responding to changing demographics, redevelopment, and rising earthquake and flood risks along the Kanda River. (Read More)
Excellence in Advancing Social Equity Award
Chuong Duong Forest Park
Hanoi, Vietnam
Think Playgrounds Company Limited
Located outside the city's dike in a flood prone area of the Red River Bank, the neighborhood of Chuong Duong is inhabited by migrant workers living in complex social structures, mostly low-income people, with precarious and vulnerable living conditions. The informal aspect of the area with high construction density and many narrow alleys leaves people without common public spaces, and disconnected with nature, despite the river being only a few hundred meters away, with a migrant low-income population that felt not deserving an access to public space in the city with the same rights as any other citizen, living in an area that was once heavily polluted by trash and used as construction dump yards, with wastewater being directly discharged onto the land from the neighboring residential area. (Read More)
Urban Design Award
Ly Thuong Kiet Street Urban Design Project
Hanoi, Vietnam
VIUP + JC VIET NAM (JC) JOINT STOCK COMPANY
The Urban Design Project for Ly Thuong Kiet Street explores the connection between three key elements: Culture – Community Activities – and Community Connectivity, through the renovation of sidewalk spaces along the street into public activity areas. The project aims to enhance urban amenities and greenery, restructure sidewalks to suit the sidewalk economy model, and express cultural values through pavement patterns, spatial forms, especially around public buildings and heritage structures of significant architectural and historical value along the street. (Read More)
Student Planning Award
Revitalization of Community Space Between Block P and Block S in Thanh Da Residential Area
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Phan Huỳnh Đoan Trâm, University of Architecture Ho Chi Minh City
Title: Revitalizing the Community Space between Block P and Block S of Thanh Da Residential Area along the Saigon River Embankment
This project addresses the challenges of urban degradation and fragmented public spaces within the old Thanh Da residential area — a neighborhood facing encroachment, lack of connectivity, and declining community interaction. The main goal is to restore social cohesion, improve living quality, and revive the cultural identity of the area.
The design strategy focuses on restoring open-space structures, expanding green areas, and encouraging community engagement. Key design elements include a riverside community garden, children’s playground, multi-functional gathering space, public parking area, green façade renovation, and preservation of the historic water tower as a symbol of local memory.
By integrating environmental, social, and cultural aspects, the proposal envisions a resilient and sustainable urban model driven by community participation. It leverages the natural landscape of the Saigon River embankment to create an open, vibrant, and inclusive space — blending heritage, people, and modern urban life.
Community Planning Award
Chuong Duong Forest Park
Hanoi, Vietnam
Think Playgrounds Company Limited
Environmental Planning Award
Totsuka Pre-Disaster Planning Collective, Shinjuku Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan
Totsuka Community-Based Collaborative Recovery Activity Research Group
Transportation Planning Award
The Transportation Planning Award was not awarded in 2025. We look forward to recognizing outstanding work in future cycles.
