Urban Climate Relief Maps (UCRM) is a participatory and intersectional research method designed to explore how people experience climate vulnerability in cities — particularly among marginalized groups such as Majority World migrants. By combining spatial mapping and personal reflection, the method reveals how social identities — such as race, gender, class, and language — interact with environmental stressors like heatwaves or flooding to shape individuals’ physical and emotional (dis)comfort across urban spaces.
Overview
UCRM builds on Relief Maps, a feminist geography method developed to make intersectionality visible by connecting power structures, emotions, and places. Originally used to study young people’s experiences in Catalonia, Relief Maps have since been adapted to analyze racialized and gendered experiences in homes, workplaces, and public spaces.
This approach transforms the abstract concept of intersectionality into a participatory, visual tool that helps uncover how privilege and oppression are experienced — and sometimes contradicted — across everyday spaces.
Urban Climate Relief Maps in IMBRACE
In the IMBRACE project, Urban Climate Relief Maps are used to understand how climate hazards like heat and extreme rain are lived by migrant communities in urban environments.
Participants map their levels of comfort and discomfort across key spaces in their daily lives — such as homes, parks, transit routes, and workplaces — first focusing on physical sensations (heat, humidity, safety) and later reflecting on how social identities and emotions influence those experiences.
The process reveals places of relief, places of oppression, and controversial intersections: spaces that may feel physically safe but socially or emotionally distressing, or vice versa. This spatialized, intersectional lens exposes how inequalities and power relations shape embodied experiences of climate stress.
Finally, a collective reflection phase invites participants to share and discuss their maps. This step turns individual experiences into shared insights, fostering dialogue and co-analysis.