Ambur 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 Ambur plotted against Tamil Nadu and India. The SNDi of new construction in Ambur was at its lowest in 1991-2005, compared to Tamil Nadu which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Ambur's incremental SNDi rose from 3.87 to 6.57 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Ambur ranked 96th out of 121 cities in Tamil Nadu and 1238th 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?

• Laiyang, China
• Bilbeis, Egypt
• Bukalasi, Uganda
• Zhytomyr, Ukraine
• Shanxian, China
• Sevastopol, Ukraine

While Laiyang and Zhytomyr both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, Ambur built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then shifted to more disconnected patterns in new street additions. Looking at the full network, Laiyang and Zhytomyr both became progressively more disconnected, while Ambur became more connected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then grew more sprawly from 1991-2005 onwards. Ambur and Laiyang have been converging in their street-network character since 1975.