Zhumadian 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 Zhumadian plotted against Henan and China. The SNDi of new construction in Zhumadian was at its lowest in 1991-2005, compared to Henan which peaked in 1976-1990 and China which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Zhumadian's incremental SNDi rose from 1.89 to 2.13 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Zhumadian ranked 38th out of 129 cities in Henan and 237th 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?

• Zhangjiakou, China
• Bogura, Bangladesh
• Siliguri, India
• Bordeaux, France
• Quzhou, China
• Lodz, Poland

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