Sustainable Urbanism-Making Indian Religious Cities Accessible

Sustainable urbanism is one of the sustainable development goals (SDG) adopted by United Nations in 2015. To achieve this goal, one of the targets is to provide safe mobility for persons with disabilities (United Nations, Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015, A/RES 70/1, The United Nations, New York, 2015). In India, religious cities receive significant number of visitors with disability as pilgrimage in Hindu tradition is always seen as a form of penance and indeed even today imposed as punishment or relief for offenses. This chapter attempts to assess sustainable urbanism of an Indian religious city from the perspective of physical mobility of disabled visitor. The study takes Madurai in India as the city for subsequent analysis. Therefore, this research addresses an important research question: Can GIS technology enhance religious tourism by improving site accessibility and planning for the visitor with disability in Madurai city? Madurai city is located on the fertile plain of the River Vaigai. The city is a major religious center and settlement for two millennia. The iconic Meenakshi temple is the major crowd puller of tourists and a good number of which are differently disabled and aged. Universal accessibility assessment of Madurai city was performed using GIS as a tool. The GIS method to assess universal accessibility of religious sites in India was developed by the authors in 2020 which includes three steps. First, an existing set of accessibility audit checklists were developed from secondary sources which was used in the context of mobility of religious tourists with disabilities. The second step comprised of performing accessibility audit of road stretches leading to or exiting from major religious landmarks. In the third step, the results of accessibility audit were imported into GIS and maps showing accessibility status of Madurai city were prepared. The outcome of the research can help the local administration to create a built environment in Indian religious city that supports participation by visitors with disability. The flexibility and precision of this method thus allows to perform universal access audit followed by cartographic representation of other religious cities around the globe.