How big is the Gelephu Mindfulness City?

The Gelephu Mindfulness City — announced by His Majesty The King on 17 December 2023 — covers 2,500 km² in southern Bhutan. That is 6.5% of Bhutan’s total land area, larger than Hong Kong, and more than three times the size of Singapore. The SAR is designed to hold up to a million people — more than the country’s current total population of 777,000.

A city of that scale, on that timeline, has no recent precedent for a country of Bhutan’s size. The Punjabi pattern of Chandigarh (114 km², built over four decades) and Naya Raipur (237 km², still under construction) sit at one and two orders of magnitude smaller, respectively. The GMC’s nearest comparators — Shenzhen, Dubai, Astana — were built by states with population bases at least twenty times larger than Bhutan’s.

The Royal articulation was correct in its decade: Bhutan needed an external-investment vehicle distinct from the rest of the country’s regulatory frame. The operational delivery is the work of the next twenty years.