Shillong 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 Shillong plotted against Meghalaya and India. The SNDi of new construction in Shillong peaked in 1991-2005, compared to Meghalaya which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Shillong's incremental SNDi fell from 6.59 to 6.26 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Shillong ranked 2nd out of 4 cities in Meghalaya and 1387th 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?

• Rohtak, India
• Sirajganj, Bangladesh
• Kedgaon, India
• Ado Ekiti, Nigeria
• Kupang, Indonesia
• Basti, India

In new street additions, Shillong and Rohtak both built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Ado Ekiti built increasingly disconnected streets over time. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Shillong and Rohtak have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.