Intersectional urbanism as a political grammar of urban transformation.

On November 6, my first academic paper for the Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica (INU) was published within the national collection “Fare spazio_Dare spazio in urbanistica.”

Titled “Intersectional Urbanism as a Political Grammar of Urban Transformation,” the paper develops the idea of intersectional urbanism as both a critical lens and a political grammar capable of rethinking how cities are imagined, designed, and governed.

In a context marked by ecological, social and political crises, the traditional categories through which urban planning has organised space are no longer sufficient. Planning can no longer be seen as a neutral or merely technical activity; it is a political act that defines who is included, who is excluded, and on what terms.

The essay argues that the city has been historically built around a standard subject — male, white, able-bodied, productive — whose supposed universality hides deep asymmetries of power. To move beyond this paradigm means to recognise diversity and vulnerability not as exceptions to be accommodated, but as structural and generative conditions of the urban.

Intersectional urbanism thus becomes a framework for redistributing visibility, legitimacy and agency. It redefines urban planning as an infrastructure for collective autonomy, where justice, care and desirability replace control, neutrality and efficiency as guiding principles.

To “make space” and “give space” are no longer technical operations; they are acts of justice, gestures that shape the possibility for plural lives to exist, belong and endure.

The full paper is freely available here.