Towns like Gelephu can be engines of economic growth. This is particularly so with regard to Gross National Product (GNP) and balance of trade. More significantly this will be true for the individuals who settle in Gelephu in the future. Moreover, towns like Gelephu are places where individuals can increase their knowledge, skills and sensitivities. Towns provide access to health care and preventive medicine. They provide a great umbrella of services under which the individual can leave aside the struggle for survival, and get on with the finer things of life.

Gelephu can provide a range of services and facilities, to its citizens, whose realization in villages are the all-consuming functions of rural life. Potable water; sewerage disposal; energy for cooking, heating and lighting are all piped and wired in; solid waste disposal and storm water drainage are taken for granted. Developed towns offer access through roads, buses, telephones and the internet. The peace and security provided by effective policing systems, and the courts of law, are just assumed to be there in mature towns. Then there are the schools, the recreation facilities, the health services and a myriad of professional services offered in the town market place. There are snack shops, fast food joints, restaurants, and grocery stores with food substitutes, pre-cooked and processed foods and ready-made meals. Cooking has become a hobby in towns!

Future citizens of Gelephu will be free from the tyrannies of disease, crime, harassment, exploitation, isolation, hunger, ignorance, and drudgery! While the rural woman is fetching fire wood, fetching water, growing vegetables and nurturing back-yard poultry, washing clothes, cooking and boiling water; her urban sister may be doing a Ph.D. on gender in rural development! All of this leaves free time to develop one’s own human resources, to pursue business, or gainful employment. One can pursue the arts, community work, politics and social work. This is all a result of the surety and security provided by the town government. Gelephu must develop into an opportunity system! It will offer a matrix of opportunities. Yet these opportunities are not equally distributed. Security, health care, education, shelter, hygiene, and most of all employment, are not equally accessible.

Intelligent Urbanism views the city as an opportunity system. It sees places like Gelephu as playing an equalizing role in the future, allowing citizens to grow according to their own essential capabilities and efforts. If a developed town is an institution, which generates opportunities, Intelligent Urbanism promotes the concept of equal access to opportunities within the urban system. Gelephu as a Growth Centre and anchor of a Special Economic Zone spread between Sarpang and Gelephu can generate as many jobs per hectare as it can arcanut trees! This vast opportunity must not be squandered! There must be a policy combining investments, regulations and incentives attracting MNCs to invest in capital intensive technology based industry, providing a high end employment market for the country’s youth.

Intelligent Urbanism promotes a guaranteed access to education, health care, police protection, justice before the law, potable water, and a range of basic services. Perhaps this principle, more than any other, separates Intelligent Urbanism away from other elitist, efficiency oriented urban charters and regimes.

Intelligent Urbanism does not say every household in Gelephu will stay in the same house type, or travel in the same vehicle, or consume the same amount of electricity. It says every citizen in Gelephu will have opportunities, and access to shelter, to transport, to electricity, to potable water, to sanitation, to waste disposal, to the public domain, to knowledge, education, and to basic health care.

Intelligent Urbanism recognizes the existence of poverty, of ignorance, of ill health, of malnutrition, of low skills, of gender bias and ignorance of the urban system itself. Intelligent Urbanism is courageous in confronting these forms of inequality, and backlogs in social and economic development. Intelligent Urbanism sees an urban plan, not only as a physical plan, but also as a social plan and as an economic plan! This economic plan is not conceived for the tiny population living in the area, but for the country as a whole!

The ramifications of this understanding are that the people living in Gelephu will not experience urban development in “standard doses”. People may be born equal, but they grow inequitably! An important role of Growth Centers like Gelephu is to provide a variety of paths and channels for each individual to set right their own future, against the inequity of the past. This is a more salient aspect of a free society, than even voting rights. Access to opportunity is the essence of self-liberation and human development. The concept is to open channels in this Special Economic Zone which are large enough to cater to the entire country, and not just the local population.

There will be a variety of problems faced by urbanites and they need a variety of opportunity channels for resolution. If there are ten problem areas where people are facing stresses, like health, shelter, food, education, recreation, transport, etc., there must be a variety of opportunities through which individuals and households can resolve each of these stresses. If this opportunity matrix is understood and responded to, the city is truly functioning as an opportunity matrix. For example, opportunities for shelter could be through the channels of lodges, rented rooms, studio apartments, apartments and houses. It could be through the channel of ownership. It could be through opportunities for self-help, or incremental housing. It could be through the up-gradation of “bagos” and slums. It could be through a strong rental market!

Intelligent Urbanism promotes a wide range of solutions, where any stress is felt. It therefore promotes a range of problem statements, options, and variable solutions to urban stresses.

Intelligent Urbanism sees Growth Centers as processes and not as objects. Good urban plans facilitate those processes and do not place barriers before them. For example, it does not judge a “bago” as a blight on society. It sees the possibility that such a settlement may be an “opportunity channel” for entry into the town! Such a settlement may be the only affordable shelter, within easy access to employment and education, for a new immigrant household in the town. If the plan ignores, or destroys such settlements, it is creating a city of barriers and despair wherein a poor family, offering a good service to the town, is deigned a modicum of basic needs for survival. Alternatively, if the urban plan recognizes that the bago is a mechanism for self development, a spring-board from which children have access to education, a place which can be up-graded with potable water, basic sanitary facilities, street lights and paving…then it is a plan for opportunity. Intelligent Urbanism believes that there are slums of hope and slums of despair. It promotes slums of hope, which contribute, not only to individual opportunities, but also to nation building. What are presently under serviced, unhygienic slums could be well planned site and service estates.

Table 1.1 : Opportunity Matrix

O P P O R T U N I T Y M A T R I X
		L O W E N D ……………………………………… O P T I O N S …………………………………… H I G H E N D
		1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
S T R E S S E S	Food	Scrap Food / Junk food	Cooking for Self	Dhabas / Common Tiffin	Mess	Kitchen Corner in Room	Shared Kitchen	Family kitchen	Cook Prepares	Restaurants
	Shelter	Street Sleeping	Shared Bagos	Shared Rooms / Lodges	Rented Bagos and Sub-Rented Apartment Rooms	Shared Houses	Rented Apartments	Apartment Ownership	Rented Cottages and Bungalows	Owned Bungalows and Houses
	Clothing	Discarded	Self Made	Second Hand	Local Tailors	Readymade	Branded	Imported Cloth	Boutique, Imports	Fashion Designers
	Education	Training and Guidance Maintained at Work Site / Play Learning	Parented and Sibling	Adult, Elderly and Informal Education	Creche / Nursery / Pre-Primary Schooling	Primary / Secondary Schooling	Higher Secondary / Traditional crafts On-the-Job learning	Local Colleges / Vocational Technical courses	Regional Foreign University for Under-Graduation and Post- Graduation	Distant Foreign University for Higher Education
	Transport	Walking	Walking / Bicycles	Walking / Rickshaws / Hitching Trucks	Walking / Two wheelers / Taxis / Intra-City Buses	Walking / Taxis / City Buses / Inter-City Buses	Employer Vehicles / Cars / Taxis / Buses / Trains	Employer Vehicles / Cars / Taxis / Regional Buses / Trains / Flights	Employer Vehicles / Cars / Trains / Regional Flights	Employer Vehicles / Cars / Regional and International Flights
	Health	Superstitious Rituals	Traditional Local Medicine people	Trained Para medical people / Community Health Centers	Primary Health units / Paramedics	Neighbor-hood Clinics / Dispensaries	Regional Health Facilities	Thimphu Hospital	Indian Specialty Hospitals	Distant Foreign Options
	Recreation	Inebriants / Domas / Bidis	Traditional Sports Activities / Inebriants	Newspapers / Radio / T.V.	Gardens / T.V. / Videos / Films	Parks / Sports / Cafes / Bars / Films	Clubs / Discos / Gymnasiums / Shopping	Local Tours / In-Country Tours	India Tours / Regional Tours	Foreign Tours
	Savings / Debts	Debts to Money Lenders	Friends / Family / Money Lenders	Money Lenders / Family /Friends	Family / Friends/ Employers / Money Lenders	Family / Friends / Bishis / Money Lenders / Gambling / Employers	Provident Fund / Bishis / Gambling / Employers	Banks / Provident and Mutual Funds / Employers	Banks / Shares / Provident and Mutual Funds / Employers	Financial Institutions / Equities / Businesses / Banks

Note : 1) Location of a “ Stress Reducing Option “ at the low end or at the high end does not necessarily imply “ Better “ or “ Worse “, though that may be the case.

2) A “Stress Reduction Option” at the low end, like “walking”, may operate at any higher level, while a higher end option may not operate at a lower level.

The opportunity matrix must also respond to young professionals, to skilled, well-paid blue collar workers, to the upper middle class and to well-to-do entrepreneurs. If a range of needs, of abilities to pay, of locational requirements and of levels of development of shelter is addressed, then opportunities are being created.

Intelligent Urbanism believes that private enterprise is the logical provider of opportunities, but that alone it will not be just or effective. The regime of land, left to market forces, will create an exclusive, dysfunctional society. Intelligent Urbanism believes that there is an essential role for the civil society to intervene in the opportunity matrix of the town.

Intelligent Urbanism promotes opportunities through access to:

• Basic and primary education, skill development and knowledge about the urban world;
• Basic health care, potable water, solid waste disposal, sewerage management and hygiene;
• Urban facilities like storm drainage, street lights, roads and footpaths;
• Recreation, sports and entertainment;
• Transport, energy, communications;
• Public participation and debate;
• Finance and investment institutions and instruments;
• Land and/or built-up space where goods and services can be produced;
• Economic infrastructure;
• Economic incentives through low interest loans, subsidized training, tax holidays and access to productive inputs;
• Social, economic and environmental regulation;
• Law, order and justice.

Intelligent Urbanism provides a wide range of zones, districts and precincts where activities and functions can occur without detracting from one another.

Intelligent Urbanism believes that enterprise can only flourish where a public framework provides opportunities for enterprise. This system of opportunities operates through public investments in economic and social infrastructure; through incentives in the form of appropriate finance, tax inducements, subsidized skill development for workers, and: regulations which protect the environment, safety, hygiene and health. It is through government regulations that private investment can be protected from fraud. It is through government regulation that an equitable “playing field” for free enterprise can be made to function!

Intelligent Urbanism understands that towns like Gelephu are not just objects, or a group of objects, that support human endeavors. The town is an institution, which promotes development processes and opportunities. The town is an economic engine which pulls employment, productivity, profits, revenue, positive trade balance and national balance.