Yan'an 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 Yan'an plotted against Shaanxi and China. The SNDi of new construction in Yan'an rose steadily, compared to Shaanxi which peaked in 1976-1990 and China which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Yan'an's incremental SNDi rose from 3.75 to 5.57 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Yan'an ranked 54th out of 62 cities in Shaanxi and 1635th 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?

• Buôn Ma Thuột, Vietnam
• Hpa-An, Myanmar
• Huairou, China
• Minya Al-Qamh, Egypt
• Yoshkar-Ola, Russia
• Bahía Blanca, Argentina

In new street additions, Yan'an and Minya Al-Qamh both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Buôn Ma Thuột built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. For the full network, Yan'an and Minya Al-Qamh both became progressively more disconnected, while Buôn Ma Thuột became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards. Notably, Yan'an had a more connected network than Buôn Ma Thuột in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.