Rudong 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 Rudong plotted against Jiangsu and China. While Jiangsu and China both followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase, Rudong's new street additions followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Rudong's incremental SNDi rose from 2.08 to 2.25 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Rudong ranked 16th out of 101 cities in Jiangsu and 227th 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?

• Agona Swedru, Ghana
• Meki, Ethiopia
• Lingling, China
• Jiadong, China
• Amreli, India
• La Vega, Dominican Republic

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