Dhaka 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 Dhaka plotted against Bihar and India. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Dhaka's incremental SNDi rose from 1.76 to 2.11 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Dhaka ranked 35th out of 264 cities in Bihar and 706th 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?

• Sirjan, Iran
• Delduar, Bangladesh
• 천리마구역, North Korea
• Renk, South Sudan
• Zhoukoudian, China
• Mandla, India

While Sirjan and Renk both built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then shifted to more disconnected patterns, Dhaka fluctuated in its street-construction patterns in new street additions. Looking at the full network, Sirjan and Renk both became more connected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then grew more sprawly from 1991-2005 onwards, while Dhaka grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved. Notably, Dhaka had a more connected network than Sirjan in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.