Namakkal 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 Namakkal plotted against Tamil Nadu and India. The SNDi of new construction in Namakkal rose steadily, compared to Tamil Nadu which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Namakkal's incremental SNDi rose from 3.44 to 4.33 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Namakkal ranked 25th out of 121 cities in Tamil Nadu and 580th 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?

• Patan, India
• Timika, Indonesia
• Saidpur, Bangladesh
• Victoria, Canada
• Adoni, India
• Hinthada, Myanmar

While Patan and Victoria both fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, Namakkal built increasingly disconnected streets over time in new street additions. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Notably, Namakkal had a more connected network than Victoria in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.