2026 | ongoing
the city makes me sick is a research project that investigates the relationship between the body, urban space, and the climate crisis, starting from a point of observation that still remains marginal within architectural, urban, and political debate: the experience of people living with chronic gynaecological conditions, persistent pain, fatigue, intermittent vulnerability, and forms of disability that are not always visible or recognised.
the project begins from the hypothesis that the contemporary city continues to be designed, regulated, and imagined around an implicit body: healthy, autonomous, productive, mobile, continuous, able to move through space without interruption and to adapt to its rhythms. this body is rarely named, yet it acts as the silent measure of urbanism. it determines times, distances, standards, infrastructures, services, thresholds of access, and forms of presence considered legitimate.
everything that deviates from this norm — pain, fatigue, cyclicality, inflammation, hypersensitivity, the need to pause, the need for accessible services, difficulty sustaining long journeys, vulnerability to heat, cold, humidity, or noise — tends to be treated as a private, individual, or medical issue. this research instead proposes to read these experiences as critical indicators of the quality of urban space. not as exceptions to be accommodated afterwards, but as points of observation capable of showing where the city fails, what it excludes, and which forms of life it is still unable to sustain.
through a perspective that brings together intersectional urbanism, crip theory, feminisms, climate justice, and situated knowledges, the research analyses how the material, environmental, and social conditions of the city affect bodies already exposed to often invisible forms of fragility. heat, humidity, noise, the absence of shade, the scarcity of places to rest, the availability of public toilets, the quality of transport, and the possibility of slowing down or interrupting a route are not considered simple elements of urban comfort. they are infrastructures that can make presence in public space either possible or impossible.
in this sense, the project does not simply call for more “inclusive” cities. its aim is to question the very structure of urban thought when it continues to begin from an abstract and apparently universal subject. the experiences of vulnerable, intermittent, or non-conforming bodies become tools for reading the relationship between space, health, gender, ability, climate, and inequality. the central question is not only how to make the city more accessible, but what idea of body, time, and life has been embedded in its planning models.
the project focuses in particular on non-oncological chronic conditions related to gynaecological health and persistent pain, such as endometriosis, vulvodynia, pelvic floor hypertonia, adenomyosis, lichen, fibromyalgia, and other conditions often coexisting or intertwined with neuropathic, inflammatory, autoimmune, or neurodivergent symptoms. these conditions are frequently underdiagnosed, poorly recognised at social and institutional levels, and rarely considered in urban policies, although they profoundly affect mobility, work, relationships, access to public space, and quality of life.
from a methodological point of view, the research develops through an anonymous questionnaire addressed to people living with these conditions or undergoing a medical path towards diagnosis and care. the questionnaire collects experiences, perceptions, daily obstacles, adaptation strategies, and relationships between symptoms, environment, and urban space. its aim is not to produce a rigid classification or an exhaustive statistical mapping, but to bring out forms of situated knowledge: ways of inhabiting, crossing, avoiding, or negotiating the city that rarely enter decision-making processes.
the responses collected will make it possible to observe how certain urban conditions — extreme temperatures, lack of resting places, absence of accessible toilets, routes that are too long or too exposed, crowded transport, noise, lighting, insecurity, or lack of proximity — may interfere with bodies characterised by pain, fatigue, or non-linear rhythms. at the same time, the questionnaire seeks to give value back to the strategies people develop in everyday life: routes chosen or avoided, modified timings, self-protection practices, renunciations, micro-adaptations, and forms of spatial competence produced through the experience of limitation.
the research assumes that lived experience is not a lesser form of knowledge when compared to technical expertise. on the contrary, when it is collected, interpreted, and brought into relation with theoretical and design tools, it can reveal aspects of space that traditional metrics often fail to capture. people living with chronic pain, intermittent symptoms, or environmental vulnerability often develop a very precise ability to read the city: knowing where it is possible to stop, where a toilet is missing, which routes are too exposed, which places generate anxiety, which climatic conditions make going outside impossible, and which infrastructures appear accessible but are not truly habitable.
this competence does not concern only a minority. vulnerability is not an exceptional condition, but a possibility that crosses every life at different moments: illness, ageing, pregnancy, temporary disability, economic precarity, stress, grief, migration, exhaustion, climatic exposure. starting from bodies that the city tends to marginalise therefore means rethinking urban space from a more real and broader condition of the human. not the ideal body of continuous performance, but situated, dependent, fragile, relational, changing bodies.
within this framework, the concept of crip space is used as a tool to rethink space not through the addition of exceptions, but through the transformation of design assumptions. crip space does not simply indicate an accessible space in a technical sense, but a space capable of accommodating discontinuities, pauses, plural temporalities, non-standard needs, and forms of interdependence. it is a perspective that shifts attention from access to habitability: it is not enough to be able to enter a space if that space does not allow one to remain, rest, orient oneself, seek protection, recover, ask for help, or modify one’s rhythm.
the climate crisis makes this reflection even more urgent. cities are increasingly exposed to heatwaves, extreme events, heat islands, pollution, humidity, environmental instability, and acoustic stress. however, these phenomena do not affect everyone in the same way. climate adaptation policies often tend to focus on technical or infrastructural solutions, without sufficiently questioning the unequal distribution of vulnerability. the research instead proposes to read climate as a bodily, social, and spatial issue: not only what changes in the urban environment, but who can continue to inhabit it, move through it, work in it, be exposed to it, and participate in it.
the ultimate aim of the project is to contribute to a model of intersectional and climate urbanism capable of holding together spatial justice, health, care, and resilience. a just city is not only a formally accessible or environmentally efficient city. it is a city capable of recognising the plurality of bodies and temporalities that inhabit it; a city that does not treat fragility as a problem to be hidden, but as an ordinary dimension of collective life; a city that designs infrastructures of pause, proximity, shade, care, orientation, safety, and adaptability.
from this perspective, architecture and urbanism are not only called upon to produce new forms, but to construct conditions. conditions that allow different bodies to coexist in public space; that prevent presence from being reserved only for those able to sustain speed, exposure, and performance; that make resilience mean not enduring more, but transforming the environments that produce exclusion. design innovation therefore does not coincide with the addition of special solutions, but with the ability to reformulate the very criteria through which we define urban quality, sustainability, and habitability.
the city makes me sick is therefore part of a broader research path on space, vulnerability, and justice. starting from the questionnaire and the testimonies collected, the project aims to build a qualitative basis for developing theoretical reflections, critical tools, and possible lines of orientation for design practices more attentive to real bodies. it is not a matter of speaking “on behalf of” marginalised experiences, but of creating the conditions for these experiences to become part of the way we understand, evaluate, and transform the city.
the questionnaire is available at this link. people who recognise themselves in the themes of the research can take part voluntarily, contributing to the construction of a qualitative archive of urban experiences that are often absent from public debate. participation is anonymous and designed to respect the sensitivity of the information shared. its purpose is not to collect testimonies as simple individual stories, but to recognise in them a form of knowledge capable of critically questioning the way the city is designed, organised, and lived.