Renia Ehrenfeucht
Renia Ehrenfeucht
Professor of Community and Regional Planning
Renia Ehrenfeucht is a professor of Community and Regional Planning at The University of New Mexico. Her teaching and research explore the politics of land, housing, public spaces, climate adaptation, and equitable planning, with a focus on how communities shape the places where they live. Her work emphasizes reciprocal relationships and connecting research and planning to the needs and knowledge of communities.
Renia Ehrenfeucht is a professor of Community and Regional Planning at The University of New Mexico, where her work explores the politics of land and how people create change in the places and communities where they live. Her teaching and research span housing, public spaces, climate adaptation, equitable planning, and the ways communities navigate public institutions and systems.
Central to Ehrenfeucht’s work is the belief that planning begins with relationships. Her experiences working in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and in Albuquerque have shaped her understanding of how deeply people are connected to place, family, community, and generations of local knowledge. She emphasizes reciprocal relationships as essential to imagining and building more equitable communities.
Her community-engaged research includes work with nonprofit organizations addressing heirs’ property, where homes and land passed through generations without formal legal processes can create barriers to accessing loans, disaster recovery resources, and other forms of assistance. Through this work, she has explored how research and partnerships can elevate community experiences and inform approaches that better recognize the different ways people hold and maintain land.
Ehrenfeucht also brings community knowledge directly into her teaching and research. She serves on the board of the Albuquerque Affordable Housing Coalition and participates in advisory committees and community initiatives, creating opportunities both to contribute her expertise and learn from others. She also views students working on her projects as co-researchers whose knowledge, interests, and experiences strengthen the work.
Across her teaching, research, and partnerships, Ehrenfeucht approaches planning as a collaborative process rooted in curiosity, reciprocity, and action. As she shares in her Faculty Spotlight, planning is about envisioning the world we want to live in and working together to get there.
