Longyan 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 Longyan plotted against Fujian and China. While Fujian and China both followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase, Longyan's new street additions followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Longyan's incremental SNDi rose from 2.88 to 3.12 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Longyan ranked 25th out of 75 cities in Fujian and 892nd out of 1843 in China as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Pratapgarh, India
• Bloemfontein, South Africa
• San Juan, Argentina
• Huzhou, China
• Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
• Suez, Egypt

While Pratapgarh and Huzhou both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, Longyan fluctuated in its street-construction patterns in new street additions. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Longyan and Pratapgarh have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.