Sunam 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 Sunam plotted against Punjab and India. While Punjab and India both followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase, Sunam's new street additions followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Sunam's incremental SNDi rose from 2.16 to 2.64 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Sunam ranked 1st out of 41 cities in Punjab and 107th 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?

• Gwarzo, Nigeria
• Sikka, India
• Novocheboksarsk, Russia
• Senapati, India
• Ituiutaba, Brazil
• Luiza, Democratic Republic of the Congo

In new street additions, Sunam fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, while Gwarzo built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved and Senapati fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full network, Sunam and Gwarzo both became progressively more disconnected, while Senapati became progressively more disconnected. Sunam and Gwarzo have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.