Mandla 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 Mandla plotted against Madhya Pradesh and India. The SNDi of new construction in Mandla rose steadily, compared to Madhya Pradesh which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Mandla's incremental SNDi rose from 4.31 to 6.36 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Mandla ranked 67th out of 98 cities in Madhya Pradesh and 1265th 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?

• Zhoukoudian, China
• Renk, South Sudan
• Dhaka, India
• Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic
• Mengcheng, China
• Mthatha, South Africa

In new street additions, Mandla and Puerto Plata both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Zhoukoudian built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. For the full network, Mandla and Puerto Plata both became progressively more disconnected, while Zhoukoudian became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards. Notably, Mandla had a more connected network than Zhoukoudian in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.