Bazhong City 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 Bazhong City plotted against Sichuan and China. The SNDi of new construction in Bazhong City was at its lowest in 1976-1990, compared to Sichuan which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase and China which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Bazhong City's incremental SNDi rose from 4.06 to 5.8 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Bazhong City ranked 79th out of 98 cities in Sichuan and 1646th 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?

• Purwakarta, Indonesia
• Buram, Sudan
• Uíge, Angola
• Vijayapura, India
• Jalalabad, Afghanistan
• Latakia, Syria

In new street additions, Bazhong City built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns, while Purwakarta fluctuated in its street-construction patterns and Vijayapura built increasingly disconnected streets over time. Looking at the full network, Purwakarta and Vijayapura both became progressively more disconnected, while Bazhong City became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards.