DDes Conference 2026 Carrots and Sticks: Incentives Shaping the “Rurban” Interface
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About this Event
Across the Global South, the boundaries between cities and their surrounding countryside are dissolving. What emerges is increasingly contested territory, where the pressures of development and sustainability efforts push against each other, reshaping land, housing, livelihoods, and governance in the process. Yet, the incentives steering these transformations, from subsidies, regulations, and land use changes, often stabilize one condition while unsettling another.
This conference unpacks these dynamics through two lenses: “rurbanity,” the productive co-presence of urban and rural elements within shared territories of land, labor, and resources; and “carrots and sticks,” the incentive mechanisms through which states and markets shape where and how people can live.
Bringing together scholars and researchers across planning, economics, design, and development, the conference spans themes of climate adaptation and environmental governance, social formation and poverty reduction, and the role of data and digital infrastructures in emerging economies. Through keynote lectures, panel discussions, and a participatory workshop, it asks: Whose “sustainability” is being promised, and at whose expense? What spatial forms and institutional arrangements can navigate the tension between growth and ecological resilience? Under what conditions can the “rurban” interface generate inclusive welfare without reproducing new forms of precarity?
Open Call: Glossary of Rurbanity
How do people name the spaces, phenomena, processes, and resulting features where city and countryside blend into one another in their own languages?
As part of the conference, we are assembling a collaborative glossary that unfolds how the rurban interface is named, understood, and designed across the world. We invite students, researchers, and practitioners to contribute a keyword in any language, accompanied by a short essay and an image.
Selected contributors will be invited to present at the conference roundtable. All accepted entries will be published in a printed booklet and on a forthcoming open-access website.
Please contact conference organizers Sophia Xiao, Yihao Wu, and Yunjie Zhang with any questions.
See the full call, submission guidelines, and example entry.Schedule
and Urbanism, Harvard GSD
• Li Hou, Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design, Harvard GSD
• Chen Chu, PhD Candidate, MIT DUSP
• Rawan Alsaffar, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard GSD
• Salma Abouelhossein, PhD Candidate, Harvard GSAS
• Dení López López, PhD Candidate, MIT DUSP
• Mariana Alegre Escorza, Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design, Harvard GSD
• Aarthi Janakiraman, Assistant Professor of Preservation and Urbanism, Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment
• Anjali Kaur, Senior Associate (Non-resident), Chair on India and Emerging Asia Economics at Center for Strategic and International Studies Senior Associate
• Tyler Harlan, Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies, Loyola Marymount University
• Ran Ai, PhD Candidate, University of Toronto
Harvard University welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected] in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for American Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance. Please note that the University will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.
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