Chidambaram 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 Chidambaram plotted against Tamil Nadu and India. The SNDi of new construction in Chidambaram rose steadily, compared to Tamil Nadu which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Chidambaram's incremental SNDi rose from 5.07 to 5.99 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Chidambaram ranked 109th out of 121 cities in Tamil Nadu and 1567th 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?

• Biskra, Algeria
• Shaistaganj, Bangladesh
• Lili, China
• Amarpur, India
• Xinzhou, China
• Sucre, Bolivia

In new street additions, Chidambaram and Amarpur both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Biskra built increasingly connected streets over time. For the full network, Chidambaram and Amarpur both became progressively more disconnected, while Biskra became progressively more connected. Chidambaram and Biskra have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.