Dr Mingyu Zhu and Partners Win Design Research for Healthy Cities Award
Published: 24 November 2025
The Healthy City Design Awards 2025 celebrate and recognise professional and research excellence in the design and planning of healthy and sustainable cities and communities around the world
Dr Mingyu Zhu, along with Dr Jiayi Jin and Prof. Richard Laing from Northumbria University, won the Research for Healthy Cities Award at the Healthy City Design 2025 International Congress.
The winning paper, ‘Co-mapping future scenarios and uncertainties amid climate crisis: A collective study of coastal towns and the Port of Tyne’, builds on the Brown to Green’ transition project, funded by the AHRC Design Exchange Partnership (DEP). The study explored how participatory mapping and scenario-building can empower coastal communities to engage with complex transitions in the face of climate change.
Working in collaboration with their industrial partner, Omanos Analytics, the authors brought together residents, planners, and designers and visualised future scenarios of just energy transition and urban transformation. The research demonstrates how technology and design can act as a bridge between urban planning and social imagination, giving voice to local narratives often overlooked in top-down urban policies.
Dr Zhu shares “Receiving this award alongside international leaders in healthy urban design underscores the growing importance of inclusive, data-driven, and design-led approaches to health and sustainability.
“For us, the award highlights the value of cross-disciplinary collaboration and the power of design research to influence real-world decision-making.
"Designing healthier cities begins with listening, to data, to place, and to people. This award is a reminder that transformative urban change is a collective endeavour, built on imagination, inclusion, and action.”
The panel described the submission as an “incredibly rich paper,” noting its participatory approach and particular focus on deindustrialised port communities.
The final session of this year’s Healthy City Design Congress provided the chance to recognise and celebrate innovation and excellence in the planning, design and construction of the urban built environment for human health and wellbeing, sustainable development, and planetary health.
The Awards also offered an opportunity to honour one of the great minds in the field and a huge supporter of the Congress over the years, the late Professor Rachel Cooper.
Trophies were presented across seven categories, encompassing design for homes and neighbourhoods, workplaces, placemaking, transport and mobility, social infrastructure, the public realm and, finally, the contribution of the research community to advancing knowledge in this field.
First published: 24 November 2025
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