Space allocation

While traveling, my wife and myself were enjoying the landscape and the scenic beauty. She asked about the dimension of an acre of land. It is 66 feet by 660 feet. Quite odd shape to divide the farm land. A lengthy rectangular partition. She asked if there is any reason behind such division. It seems like an ancient practice. May be from the time man started cultivation as a part time apart from his full time hunting job.

While reflecting, suddenly a similarity appeared between this land dimension and a totally different system. It is agraharam.

The Brahmins had an upper hand over the society. Their contribution is reflected in many areas of Indian life in the past. They were also biased towards their own kith & kins, (like any other human being). So, if they were doing town planning, we could expect them to occupy prime locality. The center of the town had the temple. Brahmins lived close to the temple. The central land ratio should had been minuscule compared to town's total land size. Low availability and high demand plus compulsory allocations to Brahmins would have a driven towards optimal, compressed allocation algorithm.

Probably with the above constraints, they got houses with odd dimension. In a typical agraharam house, a corridor will start from the front door and run towards the end. Rooms will be placed one after another along with the corridor. A small garden or open space will be available at the end of the house. It is a lengthy house with narrow width; the width of the house is always 1 room wide and the length could be 5 rooms or more.

The reason for the odd dimension is the resource crunch. Here the sacred street is the resource, which ought to be shared by as many as possible.

Going back to the farm land, similar resource crunch and optimal allocation might have lead to such rectangular division. The resource could be the water body like river, or the resource can be the approach or reachable to the road.

Would like to see if these rectangular partitions are adapted at international level.