Dhenkanal 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 Dhenkanal plotted against Odisha and India. The SNDi of new construction in Dhenkanal rose steadily, compared to Odisha which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Dhenkanal's incremental SNDi rose from 4.11 to 6.43 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Dhenkanal ranked 40th out of 58 cities in Odisha and 1175th 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?

• Shenhu, China
• Phagwara, India
• Pinar del Rio, Cuba
• Heraklion, Greece
• Yiyuan, China
• Nankana Sahib, Pakistan

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