Copenhagen 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 Copenhagen plotted against Hovedstaden and Denmark. While Hovedstaden and Denmark both rose steadily, Copenhagen's new street additions rose steadily. Most recently, Copenhagen's incremental SNDi rose from 2.33 to 2.5 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Copenhagen ranked 1st out of 1 cities in Hovedstaden and 1st out of 5 in Denmark as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Torreón, México
• Baoding, China
• Vitória, Brazil
• Dehradun, India
• Yichang, China
• Thrissur, India

In new street additions, Copenhagen and Dehradun both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Torreón fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Copenhagen and Torreón have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.