The science of Population Projection and Accommodation is one of the most controversial and debateable topics in Urban Planning. The primary aim of this chapter is to elaborate the possible urban growth scenarios for Gelephu under varied assumed conditions, which will help the city managers and planners to plan the development strategies and related services and amenities for the future. In the process, what is important is to be aware of the factors which excel the population growth and to provide solutions for them. These include the area needed to house the future population, their work space requirements, the amount and level of amenities and facilities needed to serve the future population. As a planning philosophy, the wrong thing to do is to under plan for the future, or conversely to spread the facilities out of the population concentration too quickly, making them uneconomical in terms of operational cost. Thus planned and well phased development of the town becomes very crucial for the success of the Gelephu Structure Plan. For initiating such a process in the town, the proposals for action strongly suggests an alternative planning approach of breaking the town into a series of urban villages with specific population carrying capacities, which form the basic unit of planning and which have optimal populations and services, become the approach. These Urban Villages will be self-contained, independent units in terms of amenities and services provision, which will be directly proportional to the number of people living in respective Urban Villages.
In this exercise one has to consider two more factors: