DDes Conference 2026 Carrots and Sticks: Incentives Shaping the “Rurban” Interface
Harvard GSD - Piper Auditorium, Cambridge, MA
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…