Luena 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 Luena plotted against Haut-Lomami and Democratic Republic of the Congo. While Haut-Lomami and Democratic Republic of the Congo both followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase, Luena's new street additions followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Luena's incremental SNDi rose from 1.93 to 3.8 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Luena ranked 14th out of 17 cities in Haut-Lomami and 105th out of 186 in Democratic Republic of the Congo as of 2020.

Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.

What about similarly populated cities?

• Brownsville, United States
• Najafabad, Iran
• Castelló de la Plana, Spain
• Shenqiu, China
• Lianjiang, China
• Rumbek, South Sudan

While Brownsville and Shenqiu both built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, Luena fluctuated in its street-construction patterns in new street additions. For the full network, Luena grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved, while Brownsville became progressively more disconnected and Shenqiu grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved. Luena and Brownsville have been converging in their street-network character since 1975.