This year our founder and director, Mark Drane, has been selected to participate in the ULI Health Leaders Network. Cohort 8 which he is part of is made up of 28 emerging and established leaders from diverse fields including real estate development, planning, design, engineering, finance, law, community engagement, and public health. The programme includes a series of activities through the year and in this blog Mark consolidates and shares some of his learning and thinking from the Introductory Forum which was in Miami, Florida.

A photo album that complement this blog is accessible at this link.

arriving well

The timing of the ULI Health Leaders cohort is absolutely perfect for me during 2025. Having just completed my PhD and graduated in November it gives me a great sandpit within which to explore how my work, research, and practice, Urban Habitats, develop next. It also helps to address really / seemingly simple things like the difficulty of travelling during my PhD due to the pandemic and how writing a thesis can make it difficult to connect out with other people – I hadn’t been on a plane since 2018 for example! That was to the City Streets conference in Beirut.

My own mental wellbeing had not been the most robust in the preceding six months either and despite having taken great efforts to make my workload manageable I was already by autumn / winter 2024 felt the stress starting to increase. This also affected my arrival and what I needed to do to make things manageable: travel & immigration; planning an itinerary as a perfectionist; meeting new people in informal social gatherings; keeping my energy levels up in hot weather and with long days. In the end these all went very smoothly and well and I’ve even finally overcome my hesitation and learned the skills of paying using my phone and ordered an Uber!

Also prior to arrival we were given some excellent readings by the amazing ULI team. The one I found most engaging from that extensive list was: Race, Housing, and Displacement in Miami​ – connecting historical patterns of racial discrimination to modern disparities (link). I know about redlining from text books but this was really informative to see real examples of the impact of this both in the past and today: “local planning agencies as well as bankers appraised neighborhoods based on lending risk involved. Racist appraisal practices meant areas of Dade county in which African Americans resided received the lowest… ratings. Black residents were trapped in exploitative housing or tenancy situations because they could not obtain… loans.”

From my own research, although a visit to the Everglades was not on the cards, I was keen to hear about Indigenous and Tribal land rights, health and wellbeing. This topic was certainly on my mind this being my first visit to the US since engaging much more with Indigenous thinkers and writers over the last five years. Indigenous knowledge is increasingly referenced in mainstream design approaches under terms such as ‘nature based solutions’ yet Indigenous peoples are rarely involved in applying that knowledge – and intellectual property. I came across this excellent short film Of Sparrows and Men tells the story of how water management to protect the Everglades sparrow is having a damaging impact on Miccosukee territory. It also introduced me to the remarkable Betty Osceola, of the Miccosukee Tribe. Given that most Indigenous peoples in North America live in cities I was interested to see how some of these issues and topics manifested themselves in Miami.

day 1 | defining leadership, delivering social equity, and living The Underline

• Key topics:
  • Defining leadership in health leaders
  • Social equity approaches & understanding
• Site visit:
  • The Underline (and reference to the The Underdeck project too)

This first day was of course slightly nerve wracking to meet so many amazing people in the space of urban health.  The venue in Holland & Knight’s jaw dropping meeting rooms and great healthy food options certainly helped.

Looking back in my notes our first session led by Beth Nilsson really set the scene not just for the forum but the wider Health Leaders’ cohort – namely with the question as to what we mean by leadership and I think it is important and great to rehearse what came out of some prior group feedback defining the actions and characteristics of leadership:

• Advocating
• Empowerment
• Servant leadership
• Common goals
• Voice
• Listening
• Problem-solving
• Growth
• Empathy
• Inclusivity
• Collaborative
• Relationship-building

These are well worth returning to through the year I think.

We made several site visits including to The Underline and I think one of the most important things / themes that I took away from today was hearing Casey’s story and lived experience of The Underline. A community volunteer, she described a truly transformational impact on her health and her life that started simply with a walk on The Underline. The Underline seeks to activate the space below the railway lines above which provide a sheltered space into which significant investment has been made into artwork, spaces to sit, and beautiful pieces of landscape including the Oolite Room designed around the permeable rock that sits below the city.  We later discovered the rock is very permeable which means rising sea levels can pretty much just go under any flood defences.

Tiffany Young of Think Equity’s session on social equity was a session I had highly anticipated and it was brilliant to have it led by someone of her expertise and calibre. It was a difficult session – not that it was meant to be easy. What I reflected in my own work included: not everyone approaches the topic of healthy placemaking understanding, for example, racism as a key driver of ill health and inequity and a global issue (in spite of the evidence, e.g. The Lancet Series on racism, xenophobia, discrimination, and health). It is therefore vital for practitioners and health leaders in this space to build skills to work on these topics including with a range of people and viewpoints. I reflected on how my own learning such as through The Privilege Café has really given me a good grounding. In the time we didn’t get the chance to go deeper into Tiffany’s expertise on Cultural Intelligence so this reminded me that Marsha Ramroop’s book, Building Inclusion, is on my reading list and I need to plan in time to tackle this in a structured way during 2025 – so there’s an action!

On Day 1, it gave me a boost to hear that one of the other cohort members had heard of and even used the Planning for Healthy Places guidance that I am currently evaluating in my role on the TRUUD programme!  We ended the day with a wonderful meal together and were hosted generously by some of the local ULI members and representatives.

day 2 | walking the walk of healthy urbanism – go bold or go home!

• Key topics:
  • Miami history & context
  • Examples from practice
• Site visits:
  • Wynwood Norte & Design District
  • Little Havana

Rarely does a work venue reflect the topic so closely but the hidden gem of Los Altos excelled in every respect! This hidden speakeasy provided an amazing Latina / Latino themed venue for the day which extended to a wonderful lunch! It is part of Barlington Group’s portfolio of projects and we were lucky enough to have one of the founders with us for much of the day.

A key reflection for me from the visits and people on this second day was Plusurbia’s approach to combining heritage and cultural heritage into urban design and planning practice.  I found this quite an unusual combination certainly in a UK context where heritage would normally be seen as a niche / specialist consultant role often divorced from the design process. The practitioners confirmed as the same for Miami / US. There are certainly lessons for Urban Habitats to draw from this way of working and combination of skills.

Reports are always at risk of being confined to the actual or virtual shelf but I think Plusurbia’s Little Havana Revitalization Master Plan is an exemplar of ‘how to do it’. Especially combined with the passion and work that we heard about that informed this which Juan and Megan were able to share with us. I love the quote from Megan off their website:

Be a nuisance when it counts. Do your part to inform and stimulate the public to join your action… never give up.

Megan, Plusurbia

It was really valuable to hear the historic context of Miami including Miami Beach which was built to attract what today we’d call ‘the 1%’ and to understand this in context today.

The most important theme that I took from today’s presentations and site visits was the value of cultural heritage for health and wellbeing and just the simple fact that from a built environment perspective heritage is very often taken to reflect the tangible heritage not intangible cultural assets.  It was also interesting to hear practitioners’ very practical approach to achieving desired outcomes through clever use of zoning (e.g. encouraging smaller plots to be retained) and even addressing design quality which is not the norm in US planning.

Also I was completely impressed by two speakers: a community leader/expert/advocate and Miami native (…and public school advocate, co-founder of a school transportation company, and co-Founder of Healthy Little Havana!) and also the developer of Los Altos who were able to give us the really tough backstory to the venue and also their work progressing healthy community development in the wider area including through Healthy Little Havana.  They really exemplified grit, determination, and investment of time, money, and themselves over many years.  This I guess is what health leadership on the ground looks like and they did it with courage and a smile.

The community leader shared the inspirational story of how her grandfather had made a business out of school buses following integration of schools and growing up how living near beach was so important for leisure time. Yet these resources now are at risk currently. She shared how there remain issues of poverty and inequity despite the superficial image of Miami so her message was ‘go bold or stay home’.

I was also today able to speak with some other cohort members and had a great discussion with someone who is funding community capacity building work that is needed in their context through their development company.  This is viewed for them as part of their public affairs costs and a staff member connects community groups with support to address identified needs.

day 3 | climate, connection, & reflection

• Key topics:
  • Climate resilience & adaptation
  • Framing the coming year of action as a health leader
• Site visits:
  • Biscayne Gardens
  • South Point Park, Miami Beach

Given the topic of much of the day was climate resilience in Florida in 2025, what stood out was the contrast / tension between professionals/practitioners striving their absolute hardest and with passion yet in the face of a very large scale challenge and also the face of budget cuts and political decisions / governance.

We could also see the impact of past infrastructure projects: travelling along the I-95 we were able to speedily make our way to Biscayne Gardens on an expressway which was ploughed through the historic Black neighbourhood of Overtown in the 1960s with the forced relocation of over 12,000 people.

It was a stark contrast being stood on the public beach (which formerly would have been segregated and ‘whites only’) looking over the shipping lane with cruise liners passing regularly toward Fisher Island – a private unincorporated island with about 200 households and the highest per capita income of any place in the US.

The key themes from today were the importance of nature based solutions and working with, not against, the climate and natural systems. On a city / county largely built on permeable rock and with rising sea levels this left me wondering about the long term reality of development here. We heard how developers were in part being priced out of development near the water due to insurance prices and yet the negative consequent impact this then has on areas on higher ground which are often where Black communities and people of colour are living.

Looking forward from today I thought that there was useful learning from two very tangible case studies from Biscayne Gardens and South Point Park. They are a different context to the UK but also still very relevant / with similar issues – i.e. flood resilience, water management, and coastal restoration / resilience.

Finally I also realised there were a few cohort members I hadn’t had much of a chance to chat to so I was able to get around several of the others leading to discussions and sharing on topics from design to epigenetics!

reflecting back | looking forward

Reflecting on the entire forum the specific strategies and insights related to advancing health and equity that resonated with me most included…

Overall, the scale of challenge to achieve health equity compared to the steps being taken currently is clearly huge yet the workshops, site visits, and practitioners we heard from provided practical examples and inspiration for action.

Integration of different disciplinary focus by Plusurbia (cultural heritage and urban design).  This was new to me and inspiring for how to bring together different approaches that might be treated as separate services normally but under one roof / as an integrated service.

The Underline: a great project and yet possibly located with wealthier / healthier communities. Hopefully The Understorey which serves Overtown will now be able to progress rapidly and indeed similar projects in all areas where there is need.

Little Havana: an excellent approach, it would be interesting to come back and find out whether the aims / outcomes are achieved. This was probably the most positive in terms of action – such as simple but clever ways to protect block / lot sizes and linked to developers’ bottom line.

Indigenous land rights, cultures, and peoples: these did seem very overlooked and not given a high priority. This seems an oversight given the relative focus we heard about toward other ethnic and cultural groups as well as the reference to nature based solutions in some of the climate resilience approaches. On my final day I went to visit the remarkable 2000 year old Miami Circle which I had been pointed to earlier in the week as an example of Indigenous culture and heritage. This was a rather sad space accessed through a bigger park named for one of the white founders of Miami. It is shadowed by surrounding buildings, with a few faded display boards, and lots of waste bins. I wondered if the tanned bodies on the foredecks of power boats and a ‘Cruzin Tiki’ floating bar that sped past even knew they were passing this important site.

Finally being part of a cohort I must reflect that we learned so much from each other and form conversations and sharing our reactions to the different projects, people, and places we saw and heard from. I was inspired by and look forward to hearing more of the experiences and ideas from other members of the cohort who I have found are often be aiming to achieve very similar objectives to me but using different quite widely varying approaches and I think there is a lot to learn from this.

My intention for the rest of the year is to continue using this amazing opportunity to reflect and learn at what is quite a crucial time of transition for my own work and for Urban Habitats. The cohort provides the opportunity for this strategic thinking in a supportive  environment. We now go into monthly small group learning and other meets and a mid-year forum online through the year leading to a second in-person forum in Hong Kong in November!

Overall this has been a brilliant experience so far. I have met some wonderful people, and am relishing the rest of the year’s learning and sharing! It is a privilege to be part of Cohort 8 and I am thankful to the ULI team who planned and supported such a fabulous forum.