Building Height restrictions around Madurai Meenakshi Amman Temple

Around 250 buildings are ordered to be demolished around Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple, due to the fact that these buildings did not consider height limits or bribed the officers to construct the buildings over the corporation height limits.

These tall buildings around 1 kilometer radius are to be removed by Corporation/Police safely as soon as possible. There had been allegations on lot of bribe charges against certain few officers approving these constructions on non-compliance on heights in the city around Madurai Meenakshmi amman temple.

One of the important initiators (or the person who pulled the old files out) was Mr.Velladurai, Police Commissioner - a person to be commended!

Please read more here in dinamalar.

Post contributed by madurai mani!

Madurai City Planning is praised - concentric square design

"Good city form" is a book by Kevin Lynch and it was published by MIT Press, 1984.
He writes and praises Madurai City Architecture.

"The Indian theorists, while they may have influenced fewer actual towns, were even more explicit in the connections they made between gods, men, rites and city plans. There was a series of texts on city planning, the Silpasastras which indicated how the eath could be parceled out and the evil forces of chaos enclosed and controlled. The typical form was a mandala, a set of enclosing rings divided into squares, in which the most powerful point is at the center. Enclosure and protection point is at the center. Enclosure and protection reinforces holiness, and the key movements are from the outside in, or circling the sacred enclosure in a clockwise direction. The earth is sacred and safe to inhabit, once these rites and spatial divisions are accomplished.

The yearly religious processions follow the same encircling routes and residents organize the city in their minds in the same way. Madurai in India is a stiking example of this model in which even today the city shape, the temples, the rites, the mental images of residents, the locations of activities, the main roads and even the bus routes are all matched to this symbolic form."

Madurai Machan commenting - Only issue with it is the roads are smaller. However with bridges this issue can be solved, I believe. Architects would know better...