Harvard GSD Panel: Incentives Shaping the “Rurban” Interface | Anthropogenic Natures
"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?
Panel 1 – Anthropogenic Natures
• Abby Spinak (Discussant), Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, Harvard GSD
• Li Hou (DDes ’09), Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design, Harvard GSD
• Chen Chu, PhD Candidate, MIT DUSP
• Rawan Alsaffar (DDes ’24), Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
• Salma Abouelhossein, PhD Candidate, Harvard GSAS
0:00 Introduction by Yunjie Zhang
2:32 Presentation by Li Hou
24:58 Presentation by Chen Chu
40:40 Presentation by Rawan Alsaffar
59:02 Presentation by Salma Abouelhossein
1:15:18 Discussion and Q+A"