Ruzhou 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 Ruzhou plotted against Henan and China. While Henan and China both followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase, Ruzhou's new street additions followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Ruzhou's incremental SNDi rose from 1.48 to 2.18 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Ruzhou ranked 17th out of 129 cities in Henan and 105th 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?

• Buldhana, India
• Xilinhot, China
• Buxar, India
• Pristina, Kosovo
• Xinji, China
• Magdeburg, Germany

In new street additions, Ruzhou fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, while Buldhana built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns and Pristina built increasingly disconnected streets over time. Looking at the full network, Buldhana and Pristina both became progressively more disconnected, while Ruzhou fluctuated in connectivity. Ruzhou and Buldhana have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.