Rebecca Walker

Rebecca is an urban political ecologist whose work focuses on geographies of race and nature.  Her research investigates how environmental injustices are produced, maintained, and unmade through policy and grassroots activism.  She studies how uneven power relations shape and are shaped through urban(izing) natures.   Her work considers historic and contemporary politics of urban greenspaces, including topics such green gentrification, green infrastructure, parks and racial equity, planning history, and climate justice. She is a community-based researcher and draws on models of co-production and collaboration with community partners, and my most frequent collaborators are environmental justice and housing justice grassroots community organizers.  Her research is place-based, focusing primarily on Minneapolis and the surrounding Twin Cities Metro Area.   Rebecca received her PhD in urban and regional planning from the University of Minnesota in 2023.  She also holds a master’s degree in ecology from the University of California, Davis and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia in environmental sciences and anthropology.  Prior to joining the Geography Department at UMN, she served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from 2023-2025.