Palitana 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 Palitana plotted against Gujarat and India. The SNDi of new construction in Palitana rose steadily, compared to Gujarat which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Palitana's incremental SNDi rose from 3.21 to 5.4 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Palitana ranked 16th out of 92 cities in Gujarat and 293rd 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?

• Langwarrin, Australia
• Xincai, China
• Jerash, Jordan
• Huaibin, China
• Abu `Arish, Saudi Arabia
• Santana, Brazil

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