Principles of Intelligent Urbanism (PIU) are a set of ten axioms, laying down a value-based framework within which participatory planning can take place. Concretization of these principles arose during the preparation of the Thimphu Structure Plan, and are specificities of the concept of Gross National Happiness. These can be discussed interactively with local stake holders in an open and transparent manner. In the town of Gelephu the stake holders include the Dzongkhag Administration, Gelephu Municipal Corporation officials, land owners, and the departments of ministries, who are potential investors in the city, like the Airports Authority of Bhutan, Bhutan Telecom, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Trade and Industry. Local religious leaders, elected persons and retired senior officials are also be included in the list of stake holders. After review and amendment by stake holders, the PIU act as a consensual charter around which constructive debate over actual decisions can be evaluated and confirmed. PIU emerged from several decades of urban planning practice in Bhutan, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. They were the basis for the new capital plan for Bhutan. The Principles of Intelligent Urbanism are first described briefly, and then in more detail specifically as they relate to Gelephu.

1.1 AXIOMS FOR THE TRANSFORMATION OF GELEPHU

Principle One: A Balance with Nature emphasizes the distinction between utilizing resources and exploiting them. It focuses on a threshold beyond which deforestation, soil erosion, aquifer depletion, silting, and flooding reinforce one another in urban development, destroying life support systems. The principle promotes environmental assessments to identify fragile zones, threatened natural systems and habitats that can be enhanced through conservation, density control, land use and open space planning. In Gelephu, past mining operations in the surrounding hills have resulted in the siltation of major streams feeding the Mao Chhu basin as it enters the tarai. These deposits of silt have made the drainage system shallower and therefore wider! Due to this, the steams will choose new paths in heavy rainfall seasons. Thus, watershed management is critical to the planning, growth and even survival of Gelephu. Creating a sustainable urban environment is a goal of the plan.

Principle Two: A Balance with Tradition integrates plan interventions with existing cultural assets, respecting traditional practices and precedents of style. The proposed new stupa will become a focal point in the plan, as will the present lhakhang in the town. Giving the town a distinctive Bhutanese character is a goal of the plan.

Principle Three: Appropriate Technology promotes building materials, techniques, infrastructural systems and construction management consistent with people’s capacities, geo-climatic conditions, local resources, and suitable capital investments. Accountability and transparency are enhanced by overlaying the physical spread of urban utilities and services

upon electoral constituent areas, such that people’s representatives are interlinked with technical systems performance! Using low maintenance, cost effective and adaptable technology is a goal of the plan.

Principle Four: Conviviality sponsors social interaction through public domains, in a hierarchy of places, devised for personal solace, companionship, romance, domesticity, neighborliness, community and civic life. Creating a system of public spaces, green open places and pedestrian corridors is thus a goal of the plan.

Principle Five: Efficiency promotes a balance between the consumption of resources like energy, time and finance, with planned achievements in comfort, safety, security, access, tenure, and hygiene. It encourages optimum sharing of land, roads, facilities, services and infrastructural networks reducing per household costs, while increasing affordability and civic viability. While Gelephu is compact near the market, it is on the whole a spread out and low density town, making the supply of services and utilities costly on a per household basis. Densification therefore is a goal of the plan.

Principle Six: Human Scale encourages ground level, pedestrian oriented urban arrangements, based on anthropometric dimensions, as opposed to “machine-scales.” Walkable, mixed use urban villages are encouraged, over single-functional blocks, linked by motor ways and surrounded by parking lots. Creating such human scale environments is a goal of the Gelephu Structure Plan.

Principle Seven: Opportunity Matrix enriches the town as a vehicle for personal, social, and economic development, through access to a range of organizations, services and facilities, providing a variety of opportunities for education, recreation, employment, business, mobility, shelter, health, safety and basic needs. Gelephu shall be an Urban Growth Center, clustering higher level education facilities, hostels for students from the hinterlands, specialized health care facilities and social welfare activities. It will provide for facilitative economic and investment institutions. Creating the economic and social infrastructure and landuses to promote Gelephu as a Growth Centre is a goal of the plan. It will create economic infrastructure generating jobs, income and consumption.

Principle Eight: Regional Integration, envisions the city as an organic part of a larger environmental, socio-economic and cultural-geographic system, essential for its sustainability. Gelephu is a regional centre and shall act as the Growth Center for south-central Bhutan. The proposed airport, a dry port and the new industrial estate will make Gelephu the economic generator for the area, as well as the districts to the north for which Gelephu will act as a supply centre. The Sarpang to Gelephu Belt is a highly potential special economic zone, covering a large percentage of the low lying flat land in Bhutan. It must be carefully developed as an economic engine of the country. Exploiting Gelephu’s geographic conditions to create an “economic engine” for Bhutan is a goal of the plan.

Principle Nine: Balanced Movement promotes integrated transport systems comprising walkways, cycle paths, bus lanes and automobile channels. The modal split nodes between these become the public domains around which cluster high density, urban hubs and pedestrian, mixed-use urban villages. The Gelephu-Sarpang Belt will grow in an ad-hoc manner unless the transport network is carefully conceptualized. Modes of transport such as air, bus, truck, taxi, automobile, cycle and pedestrian must all be integrated. The Sipsu-Daipham national highway within Bhutan, linking the southern districts in the east must be part of the concept. This will also integrate the villages to the east of the Mao Chhu. Creating a “transport skeleton” as the main structure of Gelephu is a goal of the plan.

Principle Ten: Institutional Integrity recognizes that good practices inherent in considered principles can only be realized through accountable, transparent, competent and participatory local governance, founded on appropriate data bases, due entitlements, civic responsibilities and duties. PIU promotes a range of facilitative and promotive urban development management tools to achieve appropriate urban practices, systems and forms. The Structure Plan and the integrated Local Area Plans will become part of the legal framework of the area. Adequate staff must be engaged to layout the plans, accept and clear development proposals and to insure the continuous maintenance and development of infrastructure. Creating Local Area Plans and related Development Control Regulations is a goal of the plan.