Kallakurichi 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 Kallakurichi plotted against Tamil Nadu and India. The SNDi of new construction in Kallakurichi rose steadily, compared to Tamil Nadu which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Kallakurichi's incremental SNDi rose from 4.55 to 5.04 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Kallakurichi ranked 84th out of 121 cities in Tamil Nadu and 1126th 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?

• Tubruq, Libya
• Bati, Ethiopia
• Luhe, China
• Kaijiang, China
• Sillod, India
• Tanda, India

While Tubruq and Kaijiang both fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, Kallakurichi built increasingly disconnected streets over time in new street additions. For the full network, Kallakurichi and Tubruq both became progressively more disconnected, while Kaijiang fluctuated in connectivity. Notably, Kallakurichi had a more connected network than Kaijiang in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.