Fatwah 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 Fatwah plotted against Bihar and India. The SNDi of new construction in Fatwah peaked in 1991-2005, 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, Fatwah's incremental SNDi fell from 6.74 to 6.56 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Fatwah ranked 232nd out of 264 cities in Bihar and 1703rd 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?

• Sonbarsa Kacheri, India
• Yongji, China
• Baraka, Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Al-Gamaleya, Egypt
• Huaiyuan, China
• Yirga Cheffe, Ethiopia

While Sonbarsa Kacheri and Al-Gamaleya both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, Fatwah built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved in new street additions. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Notably, Fatwah had a more sprawly network than Sonbarsa Kacheri in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.