Melbourne in context: Street-network sprawl trends
Melbourne in context
The chart above shows SNDi trends for new street additions (left panel) and the entire network (right panel), with Melbourne plotted against Victoria and Australia. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Melbourne's incremental SNDi fell from 4.03 to 3.08 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Melbourne ranked 2nd out of 7 cities in Victoria and 8th out of 35 in Australia as of 2020.
New Street Additions (2006–2020)
- SNDi value
- 3.08
- Rank in Australia
- 11th of 35
- Rank in Victoria
- 2nd of 7
Entire Network (Aggregate)
- SNDi value
- 2.99
- Rank in Australia
- 8th of 35
- Rank in Victoria
- 2nd of 7
Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.
What about similarly populated cities?
- Tashkent, Uzbekistan
- Changsha, China
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Dalian, China
- Changchun, China
- Berlin, Germany
In new street additions, Melbourne and Tashkent both built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Dalian built increasingly disconnected streets over time. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Melbourne and Tashkent have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.