10th National Conference on Technological Trends (NCTT09) 6-7 Nov 2009
Planning for Historic Cities A Case Study of the Historic City Area of Madurai P.Shabitha, Dept. of Architecture & Dr.S.Nagan, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai
Introduction India, a land of great civilizations has its highest institutional expression in cities where its magnificent tradition was elaborated and refined. The traditional Indian city has had more than one function and reason for its existence, as capitals, pilgrim, temple, educational centers etc. Many such cities still thrive with activities and have become a part of the larger cities. All such traditional inner city areas apart from being historical documents are an expression of diversity and values of traditional cultures. But today many such areas are being threatened, physically degraded, or destroyed by the impact of haphazard urban growth.
Temple towns are one such type where the temple had played a vital role in shaping the social structure of the place. These areas have been places of life, vitality, wealth, power, enlightenment and culture. However, the traditional values of these inner city areas have been marginalized in the process of urban growth. The personality and character of a city is the result of centuries of growth in the course of which new elements are juxtaposed with the older ones. Temple cities in South India The temple cities in south India are formed with the enlargement process of the principle temple as the center. In and around Tamil Nadu, there are several temple cities of the shape of a concentric rectangle with a large Hindu temple as its center. They are regarded as the cities constructed according to the ideal city plan described in Shilpasastra, the ancient Sanskrit texts. There are few cities representing such a clear concentric form, which symbolizes the structure of the Cosmos, on a city scale, though cities and temples reflecting the cosmology are often observed. Madurai Madurai, well known as a pilgrim centre today, is one of the oldest cities in south India.
For the last two thousand years it has been a great centre of south Indian culture and civilization. It is one of the few cities to have enjoyed a continuous history which can be traced back to pre historic times, the origin traced back to the 6th century B.C. Politically Madurai was the capital of a single dynasty, the Pandyas who ruled continuously as far as is known from the early years of Christianity down to the 14th century. This fact more than anything else is enough to gain for Madurai a unique place. Even after the Pandyas, Madurai has continued as the capital of some dynasty or other for four centuries more. It has therefore had a continuous history as a political capital for eighteen centuries. At the present day Madurai is still one of the premier cities in the State next only to Chennai in importance. Madurai is considered to be designed according to the Rajdhani plan, described in Manasara, one of the Shilpasastra, and has the fivefold concentric rectangular formation with Meenakshi- Sundareshwara Temple at a very center point. It is regarded as the most typical city reflecting the ideal concept. Madurai is a city whose formation was mostly reconstructed in the 16th century by the Nayak as a new ruler after the Muslim invasion. Therefore, it is comprehensible that the Hindu ideal city plan was applied for the revival of Madurai, and Hinduism, too. It is considered, at the same time, to have synchronized with the trend of social reorganization based on the cosmology, which had been driven by the tie-up between the Royal Power and the Temple. The present Scenario The city has flourished as the cultural, economic and politic center of Southern India from ancient times and still keeps active urban life. The city well maintains the traditional festivals in which the processions are performed along the concentric streets.
College of Engineering Trivandrum
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