Coimbatore 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 Coimbatore plotted against Tamil Nadu and India. The SNDi of new construction in Coimbatore rose steadily, compared to Tamil Nadu which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Coimbatore's incremental SNDi rose from 4.22 to 4.9 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Coimbatore ranked 77th out of 121 cities in Tamil Nadu and 1059th 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?

• Prayagraj, India
• Dallas, United States
• Quito, Ecuador
• Chandigarh, India
• Phoenix, United States
• Dammam, Saudi Arabia

In new street additions, Coimbatore and Prayagraj both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Chandigarh built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Notably, Coimbatore had a more connected network than Prayagraj in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.