Banka 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 Banka plotted against Bihar and India. The SNDi of new construction in Banka rose steadily, compared to Bihar which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Banka's incremental SNDi rose from 4.52 to 7.29 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Banka ranked 65th out of 264 cities in Bihar and 1010th out of 1868 in India as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Whydah, Benin
• Jiawang, China
• Piedecuesta, Colombia
• Leping, China
• Ballarpur, India
• Winneba, Ghana

In new street additions, Banka built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Whydah fluctuated in its street-construction patterns and Leping fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full network, Banka and Whydah both became progressively more disconnected, while Leping became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards. Notably, Banka had a more connected network than Leping in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.