Bordeaux 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 Bordeaux plotted against Nouvelle-Aquitaine and France. While Nouvelle-Aquitaine and France both peaked in 1991-2005, Bordeaux's new street additions peaked in 1991-2005. Most recently, Bordeaux's incremental SNDi fell from 3.57 to 3.07 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Bordeaux ranked 3rd out of 7 cities in Nouvelle-Aquitaine and 25th out of 73 in France as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Zhumadian, China
• Zhangjiakou, China
• Bogura, Bangladesh
• Quzhou, China
• Lodz, Poland
• Kuningan, Indonesia

In new street additions, Bordeaux built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Zhumadian built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then shifted to more disconnected patterns and Quzhou built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved. For the full network, Bordeaux became progressively more disconnected, while Zhumadian became more connected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then grew more sprawly from 1991-2005 onwards and Quzhou grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved. Notably, Bordeaux had a more connected network than Zhumadian in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.