Jacqueline Bleicher is our first speaker at Three Colours Blue/ Liberté: How do women experience external spaces. Jacqueline will be highlighting the overarching principles to consider for diverse and inclusive cities and places.

Designing for Diversity

Have you ever stopped to notice where you feel safe and want to linger in the city? Have you observed where people congregate and socialise? Have you noted where people offered to help you if you looked lost, smiled or nodded as you walked past, or where people walked with their heads up taking in their surroundings versus rushing past heads down refusing to make eye contact?

The design of the form and shape of the built environment can positively or negatively impact on the accessibility, inclusion, health, wellbeing, sociability, economic opportunity, interest, enjoyment and comfort of inhabitants. All of which affect perceptions of safety, physical and psychological behaviours of users, residents and visitors of all ages, genders and abilities.

Considering the diverse needs of a gamut of stakeholders in the city from the young, elderly, differently-abled, pregnant, temporarily injured, and others beyond the commissioning Authority/Client, designers have a massive responsibility to first do no harm and be as inclusive in their placemaking intentions as possible.

Jacqueline’s talk briefly highlights overarching principles to consider for diverse and inclusive cities and places.

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

Jacqueline Bleicher is an Urban Designer, Masterplanner, Placemaker, a Registered and Chartered Architect and the founder of Global Urban Design.

Jacqueline has over fifteen years’ professional experience working in the built environment in the areas of: Urban Design and Masterplanning, real estate development, planning and policy development and architecture in both the public and the private sector. Her experience covers a range of sectors including: mixed-use developments, residential, public realm, parks and green space, regeneration and extensions, inclusive place design, waterfronts and transportation network planning.

Jacqueline has chaired and served on multiple working groups and steering committees in both a professional and voluntary capacity and has both collaborated with and coordinated multidisciplinary professionals and stakeholders with successful outcomes.