Mindful Urbanism: Buddhist Frameworks and Bhutan’s Model of City-Building

Abstract

Most new cities fail, and most modernization projects displace tradition. This thesis examines how these outcomes may be avoided when city-building is grounded in inherited cultural frameworks. It explores how Buddhist cosmological ideas shape territorial decisions, project authorization, and design codification in Bhutan, with the Gelephu Mindfulness City, a new city under development, as the core case. Drawing on 31 interviews and 130 documents from fieldwork across government, monastic, and civil society, the thesis argues that Buddhist frameworks function as planning resources shaping criteria, legitimacy, and design principles in ways that impact but are not reducible to formal territorial planning processes. This arrangement operates through what the thesis terms monarchical synthesis, the monarch’s ability to move between cosmological, technocratic, and participatory planning registers while retaining ultimate authority, enabling multiple planning logics to coexist without fragmenting governance. The thesis identifies transferable principles for embedding cultural values in planning practice beyond Bhutan.