Salem 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 Salem plotted against Tamil Nadu and India. The SNDi of new construction in Salem rose steadily, compared to Tamil Nadu which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Salem's incremental SNDi rose from 4.93 to 6.17 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Salem ranked 99th out of 121 cities in Tamil Nadu and 1264th 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?

• Erbil, Iraq
• Cixi, China
• Kishoreganj, Bangladesh
• Auckland, New Zealand
• Xuchang, China
• Stockholm, Sweden

In new street additions, Salem built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Erbil fluctuated in its street-construction patterns and Auckland built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Notably, Salem had a more connected network than Auckland in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.