Santiago 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 Santiago plotted against Santiago Metropolitan and Chile. The SNDi of new construction in Santiago rose steadily, compared to Santiago Metropolitan which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase and Chile which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Santiago's incremental SNDi rose from 2.97 to 3.6 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Santiago ranked 2nd out of 5 cities in Santiago Metropolitan and 10th out of 38 in Chile as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Chongqing, China
• Pune, India
• Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Shenyang, China
• Khartoum, Sudan
• Surat, India

In new street additions, Santiago and Shenyang both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Chongqing fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full network, Santiago and Shenyang both became progressively more disconnected, while Chongqing fluctuated in connectivity.