Balasore 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 Balasore plotted against Odisha and India. The SNDi of new construction in Balasore rose steadily, compared to Odisha which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Balasore's incremental SNDi rose from 5.15 to 7.98 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Balasore ranked 30th out of 58 cities in Odisha and 845th 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?

• Bhabua, India
• Munshir Hat, Bangladesh
• Guanare, Venezuela
• Hejian, China
• Heidelberg, Germany
• Kurgan, Russia

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