In order to better understand existing inequality and injustice in our cities and spaces, and to understand how vulnerability to future impacts in the context of climate change is constructed and experienced, many scholars have noted that we need to incorporate multiple factors that shape identity and access to power and resources in our analyses, including race, class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. Less widely acknowledged is the intersectionality of these factors; that specific combinations of these factors shape their own social position, lived experience, and thus affect access to power and experiences of oppression and vulnerability. To address emerging issues like climate change it is vital to find a way to understand and approach these multiple, intersecting axes of identity that shape how impacts will be distributed and experienced. This paper introduces intersectionality, a concept for understanding multiple, co-constituting axes of difference and identity, and kyriarchy, a theory of power that describes the power structures intersectionality produces, and offers researchers a fresh way of approaching the interactions of power in planning research and practice.