Meftah in context: Street-network sprawl trends

The chart above shows SNDi trends for new street additions (left panel) and the entire network (right panel), with Meftah plotted against Blida and Algeria. The SNDi of new construction in Meftah rose steadily, compared to Blida which peaked in 1991-2005 and Algeria which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall decrease. Most recently, Meftah's incremental SNDi rose from 5.43 to 6.59 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Meftah ranked 4th out of 4 cities in Blida and 107th out of 109 in Algeria as of 2020.

Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.

What about similarly populated cities?

• Ali Sabieh, Djibouti
• Otaru, Japan
• Erlangen, Germany
• Luanchuan, China
• Suraimanpur, India
• Taikang, China

While Ali Sabieh and Luanchuan both built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns, Meftah built increasingly disconnected streets over time in new street additions. For the full network, Meftah became progressively more disconnected, while Ali Sabieh became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards and Luanchuan became more connected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then grew more sprawly from 1991-2005 onwards. Meftah and Ali Sabieh have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.