Virginia Parks

Virginia Parks, PhD, is a geographer and urban planner specializing in the study of urban inequality. Her research and teaching interests include labor and employment, urban politics and policy, racial and gender inequality, and community development and organizing. She has published on a range of urban topics including the link between residential and labor market segregation, gendered mobility patterns, the racial wage gap, low-wage work, workplace diversity (particularly the representation of African Americans in public sector employment), labor and immigrant rights, and the politics of urban development. Throughout this work Professor Parks is motivated by how urban space, politics, and regulatory environments influence inequality outcomes. Utilizing a comparative approach, her research leverages geographic variability and spatial analysis in order to identify dimensions of difference and uniform tendencies in the production of urban inequality.

Her current research projects examine 1) mechanisms that disrupt the cycle of low-wage work and propel workers into good paying jobs, 2) racial and nativity disparities in access to and take-up of unemployment benefits, 3) regional and sectoral shifts in energy employment, and 4) the privatization of community engagement in large urban development projects.  Prof. Parks continues to explore the geographic variation in low-wage work, including through her online Low-Wage Atlas.