a visual notation system for mapping coexisting inequalities and socio-spatial conditions
intersectional urbanism notation is a visual notation system in progress, developed to represent intersectional urbanism through the co-presence of inequalities, their variable intensity, and the socio-spatial conditions that make the city more or less accessible, habitable, safe, or sustainable for different bodies.
the system starts from a simple assumption, though one that is often difficult to represent: urban inequalities never act one at a time. gender, socio-economic status, access to care, disability, chronic or invisible conditions, climate vulnerability, age, ethnicity, religion, and other forms of social positioning always coexist within urban space. in some contexts, one dimension may appear dominant, more urgent, or more legible than the others; yet the others do not disappear. they remain present as secondary pressures, latent conditions, interferences, less recognised vulnerabilities, or factors that modify the way a person moves through, uses, or avoids the city. intersectionality has always challenged visual representation. its complexity lies in the way different systems of inequality coexist, stratify, and shift in intensity across bodies, spaces, and contexts. each layer may carry a dominant pressure, while others remain active in the background, shaping the same socio-spatial condition from different positions.
for this reason, intersectional urbanism notation does not work through the presence or absence of single categories. rather, it works through the relationships between simultaneous conditions: their intensity, their overlap, their legibility, and the point at which an urban configuration becomes difficult to recognise as a design, social, or political problem.
at this stage, the system is composed of two complementary and still evolving languages: intersectional intensity fields and socio-spatial syntax code. the first works through chromatic fields that visualise the co-presence and relative intensity of inequalities. the second translates urban and social conditions into symbolic sequences made of points, lines, separators, and punctuation marks.
these languages are not conceived as closed or definitive systems. they are visual research tools in progress: an open grammar that becomes more precise through its application to concrete cases, its dialogue with qualitative data, the observation of urban conditions, and the progressive definition of new categories, symbols, and relations.
intersectional intensity fields
intersectional intensity fields are chromatic fields that represent the co-presence of inequalities and their relative intensity within a specific urban condition.
through intersectional intensity fields, the tomographic image becomes a way to visualise this layered complexity. it does not reduce intersectionality to a flat diagram or to the simple addition of categories, but represents it as a field of overlapping pressures, where some dimensions become more visible while others remain latent, secondary, or partially obscured. the image therefore works as a section through a complex urban condition: a visual cut that makes it possible to observe how multiple inequalities coexist within the same spatial and bodily experience.
each colour corresponds to an analytical dimension. the chromatic dominant indicates the condition that, in a given context, exerts the greatest pressure. the other colours nevertheless remain present, because no urban experience is produced by a single axis of inequality. even when one dimension appears prevalent, the others continue to act as background, interference, latent vulnerability, or less immediately visible condition.
a predominantly yellow field, for example, may indicate a configuration in which socio-economic status carries particular weight. a predominantly red field may represent a context in which gender becomes the most active condition. other colours may be associated with access to care, disability, chronic or invisible conditions, climate vulnerability, age, ethnicity, religion, or other dimensions that influence the concrete possibility of moving through, inhabiting, using, or avoiding urban space.
these chromatic associations do not constitute a definitive taxonomy, but an open legend. their aim is not to rigidly classify identities or separate inequalities into autonomous compartments. on the contrary, intersectional intensity fields are intended to show how multiple conditions always coexist within the same visual field, assuming different intensities according to context.
in this sense, they are not heat maps in a technical or medical sense. they are abstract visualisations of intersectional pressures. the chromatic fields do not simply measure data, but propose a mode of reading: where a person can stop, access a service, find shade, reach care, avoid exposure, sustain a journey, remain in public space without being excluded, exhausted, surveilled, or rendered invisible.
intersectional intensity fields therefore make visible a fundamental logic of intersectional urbanism: inequalities are not separate elements that are added together from the outside, but conditions that modulate, amplify, attenuate, or make one another less legible.
socio-spatial syntax code
socio-spatial syntax code is a symbolic notation system designed to translate urban and social conditions into graphic sequences composed of points, lines, separators, and punctuation marks.
this code does not describe space as an abstract form, but as a set of social, bodily, affective, economic, and infrastructural relations. through minimal signs, the system allows conditions such as proximity, sanitary and hygiene facilities, shade, climate shelters, seating, access to care, areas of sociality, neighbourhood networks, family relations, affective or economic dependencies, routes, thresholds, and separations to be represented.
this language too is under construction. the symbols have basic meanings, but their value becomes more precise within the sequence, in relation to the other signs, and within the urban context to which they are applied. they therefore do not function as a rigid alphabet, but as an open syntax.
the point • is the minimum unit of the code. it may indicate the object of the discourse: a person, a body, a place, a service, a sensation, a need, or an infrastructure. its meaning is not fixed, but depends on the position it assumes within the sequence.
the dash — indicates movement, distance, extension, or spatial breadth. it may represent the route required to reach a service, the duration of a condition, the continuity of a path, or the fatigue of crossing.
the vertical bar | indicates separation, threshold, interruption, or distinction between conditions. it may signal an obstacle, a boundary, a fracture in accessibility, or the point at which spatial continuity is interrupted.
the colon : may represent forms of community, neighbourhood, social proximity, or relation between multiple presences. it does not simply indicate the presence of other people, but the possibility that support, recognition, exchange, or belonging may be produced among these presences.
the semicolon ; may indicate family relations, affective or economic dependencies, bonds of care, marriage, obligation, responsibility, or constraint. unlike the colon, which may suggest a more open form of sociality, the semicolon introduces a more structured, ambivalent, or binding relation.
through the combination of these signs, socio-spatial syntax code makes it possible to construct sequences capable of representing complex urban conditions. proximity, for example, may be indicated as:
•—•—•
this sequence does not merely describe a short distance. it represents a relation between body, space, time, service, and the concrete possibility of access. from this perspective, proximity does not coincide with metric closeness, but with the real possibility of reaching what makes a space habitable.
similarly, a sequence that includes separators, pauses, or punctuation marks may represent a more fragmented urban condition: a service that exists but is difficult to reach, a climate shelter accessible only to certain bodies, a social network that supports or constrains, a threshold that interrupts the continuity of public space.
socio-spatial syntax code therefore functions as a visual grammar of intersectional urbanism. it does not replace analysis, but makes it legible through signs. it allows urban space to be observed not only in terms of functions, infrastructures, or distances, but in terms of relations, dependencies, possibilities, obstacles, and conditions of use.
blackout and threshold of interception
within intersectional urbanism notation, blackout indicates the moment when a condition ceases to be legible as a configuration and becomes opaque.
black is not an additional category within the system. it does not correspond to a specific inequality, nor to a single social, environmental, or bodily factor. rather, it is the outcome of a process of saturation. it appears when intensity fields become denser, overlap, or intensify to the point of exceeding the threshold within which a condition can still be recognised, named, and intercepted.
as in maps where a colour progressively darkens as the intensity of a phenomenon increases, in intersectional intensity fields too darkening indicates a critical passage. a dominant colour may become increasingly dense, approaching black, when the pressure it represents is no longer simply present, but excessive. black therefore does not signal an absence of information, but an excess of pressure that has not been translated into reading, response, or design.
the threshold of interception is the theoretical limit within which a condition remains legible and therefore potentially transformable. as long as an inequality, vulnerability, or infrastructural lack remains within this threshold, it can be grasped as an urban, social, or design problem. when the threshold is exceeded, the problem does not disappear: it becomes harder to grasp. it fragments across different categories, scales, and responsibilities, until it loses recognisability.
in this sense, the notation does not represent blackout only as a final outcome. it also attempts to show its process of formation. it makes visible the moment when a condition begins to darken, to thicken, to lose distinction. it is both a tool of preventive reading and a way of observing the making of blackout: the passage through which what is still interpretable risks becoming opaque.
applied to intersectional urbanism, this threshold allows us to question not only which inequalities are present, but when and how they become difficult to recognise. a condition may be evident in its effects and, at the same time, not be intercepted as a problem. it may pass through bodies, routes, relations, and infrastructures without being translated into an urban response. blackout names this fracture: the point at which pressure is present, but its legibility collapses.
a notation for reading before collapse
the combination of intersectional intensity fields and socio-spatial syntax code produces an experimental form of critical data visualisation for intersectional urbanism.
the chromatic fields show how inequalities coexist and vary in intensity. the symbolic code introduces a syntactic structure through which urban and social conditions can be named, articulated, and placed in relation. together, the two languages make it possible to represent not only which inequalities traverse a context, but also how they are organised within space, routes, thresholds, services, social networks, and infrastructures of care.
intersectional urbanism notation does not seek to represent the city as a neutral object, nor as a simple sum of buildings, functions, or public spaces. the city is read as a system of differential conditions: an environment in which access, exposure, protection, fatigue, care, dependency, proximity, and vulnerability are distributed unequally.
the system raises a number of fundamental questions. who can move through this space without becoming exhausted? who can stop? who can find shade, sanitary and hygiene facilities, care, shelter, or support? which bodies depend on family, economic, or social relations in order to access the city? which infrastructures exist, but remain difficult to reach? which inequalities are less visible, but continue to act? and at what moment do these conditions cease to be legible as collective problems and become reduced to individual difficulties?
in this sense, intersectional urbanism notation is a visual language of research. it is not designed to decorate pre-existing data, but to construct a way of reading urban conditions that often remain outside conventional representations. its function is not to simplify intersectionality, nor to fix it within an immutable legend, but to make complexity observable before it becomes opaque.
first field of application: the city makes me sick
the first field of application of the system is the research project the city makes me sick, dedicated to the relationship between cities, bodies, chronic illnesses, invisible disabilities, access to care, and climate vulnerability.
in this context, intersectional urbanism notation is used to explore how urban space can produce fatigue, exclusion, exposure, or impossibility of use. apparently minor conditions, such as the presence of seating, access to a toilet, the possibility of finding shade, distance from a service, the presence of a climate shelter, or the possibility of interrupting a route, become central elements for understanding who can truly inhabit the city.
the research starts from the idea that the sick, fatigued, disabled, or chronically vulnerable body is not an exception to be corrected, but a point of observation capable of revealing the deep functioning of urban space. when a city does not allow people to stop, shelter, care for themselves, slow down, or access minimal infrastructures of care, it does not simply produce individual discomfort. it produces a form of spatial exclusion.
through intersectional intensity fields and socio-spatial syntax code, the city makes me sick attempts to make these conditions legible before they collapse into blackout: before fatigue is interpreted as a private problem, before the absence of services is naturalised, before climate vulnerability is separated from disability, gender, socio-economic status, or access to care.
from this perspective, the minimal infrastructures of care — proximity, shade, sanitary and hygiene facilities, seating, climate shelters, and the possibility of pause — are not secondary or accessory elements. they are fundamental devices for rethinking intersectional urbanism as a practice capable of reading, even before designing, the real conditions through which bodies encounter the city.
