Maroua 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 Maroua plotted against Extrême-Nord and Cameroon. While Extrême-Nord and Cameroon both rose steadily, Maroua's new street additions rose steadily. Most recently, Maroua's incremental SNDi rose from 2.61 to 3.16 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Maroua ranked 5th out of 8 cities in Extrême-Nord and 10th out of 44 in Cameroon as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Anqiu, China
• Matsuyama, Japan
• Zhanghua City, Taiwan
• Wanzhou, China
• Maringá, Brazil
• Ryazan, Russia

In new street additions, Maroua built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Anqiu built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved and Wanzhou built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. For the full network, Maroua became progressively more disconnected, while Anqiu grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved and Wanzhou became more connected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then grew more sprawly from 1991-2005 onwards.