Shimen 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 Shimen plotted against Hunan and China. While Hunan and China both followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase, Shimen's new street additions followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Shimen's incremental SNDi rose from 3.89 to 5.01 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Shimen ranked 77th out of 89 cities in Hunan and 1566th 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?

• Mojo, Ethiopia
• Moussoro, Chad
• Nirmal, India
• Danbei, China
• Shizhu, China
• Limoges, France

In new street additions, Shimen and Mojo both fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, while Danbei built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. For the full network, Shimen fluctuated in connectivity, while Mojo became progressively more disconnected and Danbei became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards. Shimen and Danbei have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.