Bikram 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 Bikram plotted against Bihar and India. The SNDi of new construction in Bikram fell 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, Bikram's incremental SNDi fell from 4.52 to 2.97 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Bikram ranked 184th out of 264 cities in Bihar and 1527th 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?

• Chandur Bazar, India
• Poko, Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Tiquisio, Colombia
• Otavalo, Ecuador
• Zhudong, Taiwan
• Pafos, Cyprus

While Chandur Bazar and Otavalo both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, Bikram built increasingly connected streets over time in new street additions. Looking at the full network, Chandur Bazar and Otavalo both became progressively more disconnected, while Bikram became progressively more connected. Bikram and Chandur Bazar have been converging in their street-network character since 1975.