Qitaihe 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 Qitaihe plotted against Heilongjiang and China. The SNDi of new construction in Qitaihe peaked in 1991-2005, compared to Heilongjiang which peaked in 1976-1990 and China which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Qitaihe's incremental SNDi fell from 3.23 to 2.94 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Qitaihe ranked 29th out of 67 cities in Heilongjiang and 480th 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?

• Cinkassé, Togo
• Cruzeiro, Brazil
• Lorena, Brazil
• Nyíregyháza, Hungary
• Ar Riyaḑ, Egypt
• Bahuara, India

In new street additions, Qitaihe built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Cinkassé built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns and Nyíregyháza built increasingly disconnected streets over time. For the full network, Qitaihe and Nyíregyháza both became progressively more disconnected, while Cinkassé became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards. Notably, Qitaihe had a more sprawly network than Cinkassé in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.