Paramakkudi 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 Paramakkudi plotted against Tamil Nadu and India. The SNDi of new construction in Paramakkudi rose steadily, compared to Tamil Nadu which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Paramakkudi's incremental SNDi rose from 4.22 to 4.53 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Paramakkudi ranked 15th out of 121 cities in Tamil Nadu and 347th 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?

• Varginha, Brazil
• Parachinar, Pakistan
• Ismaila, Pakistan
• Ordos, China
• Dingxi, China
• Lourdes, El Salvador

In new street additions, Paramakkudi built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Varginha fluctuated in its street-construction patterns and Ordos built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. For the full network, Paramakkudi and Varginha both became progressively more disconnected, while Ordos became progressively more connected. Notably, Paramakkudi had a more connected network than Ordos in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.