about us | mark drane
Dr Mark Drane RIBA FRSA | Founder & Director
Mark is an experienced practitioner and researcher with 20 years’ experience. He works across the fields of public health, urbanism, and architecture. His work addresses the wider determinants of health, focused on promoting holistic wellbeing, and reducing health inequities.
At the heart of this work is a focus on equity and supporting people to have a sense of control in their lives. This involves creating with communities and organisations and is foundational to any notion of creating health.
His doctoral research, Healthy Streetlife, undertaken during the Covid-19 pandemic highlights the important role of streets as health settings. Mark is a practitioner and founded Urban Habitats in 2018, putting research into action in local places. He is a board member at Green Squirrel, a social enterprise with a vision for caring communities.
Mark has 20+ years’ experience in industry having contributed to the delivery of over £1 billion of social infrastructure. Now his passion is to fuse practice and research with evidence informed, co-created, & community-based interventions for human & planetary health.
Mark is also a visiting lecturer at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales where he teaches on health + place. He has contributed to Health Impact Assessments (HIA) for Public Health Wales on the impact of climate change and circular economy approaches.
Happiest whilst on a bicycle, Mark is an optimistic gardener and lives in Cardiff, Wales with his family.