Kananga 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 Kananga plotted against Kasaï-Central and Democratic Republic of the Congo. The SNDi of new construction in Kananga rose steadily, compared to Kasaï-Central which rose steadily and Democratic Republic of the Congo which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Kananga's incremental SNDi rose from 5.94 to 9.38 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Kananga ranked 3rd out of 6 cities in Kasaï-Central and 141st 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?

• Ta'izz, Yemen
• Colachel, India
• Shahajadpur, Bangladesh
• Honghuagang, China
• Mendoza, Argentina
• Kaifeng, China

While Ta'izz and Honghuagang both fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, Kananga built increasingly disconnected streets over time in new street additions. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Notably, Kananga had a more connected network than Honghuagang in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.