Laizhou 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 Laizhou plotted against Shandong and China. The SNDi of new construction in Laizhou rose steadily, compared to Shandong which peaked in 1976-1990 and China which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Laizhou's incremental SNDi rose from 3.05 to 3.3 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Laizhou ranked 96th out of 124 cities in Shandong and 1016th 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?

• Lausanne, Switzerland
• Pollachi, India
• Moçâmedes, Angola
• Habra, India
• Manikchak, India
• Tokushima, Japan

In new street additions, Laizhou built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Lausanne built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved and Habra built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. For the full network, Laizhou and Lausanne both became progressively more disconnected, while Habra became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards. Laizhou and Habra have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.