Virudhachalam 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 Virudhachalam plotted against Tamil Nadu and India. While Tamil Nadu and India both followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase, Virudhachalam's new street additions followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Virudhachalam's incremental SNDi rose from 4.09 to 4.48 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Virudhachalam ranked 89th out of 121 cities in Tamil Nadu and 1157th 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?

• Fazenda Parque Recreio, Brazil
• Lanshan, China
• Kahama, Tanzania
• Zhangpu, China
• Farah, Afghanistan
• Saktipur, India

In new street additions, Virudhachalam and Zhangpu both fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, while Fazenda Parque Recreio built increasingly disconnected streets over time. For the full network, Virudhachalam and Zhangpu both fluctuated in connectivity, while Fazenda Parque Recreio became progressively more disconnected. Notably, Virudhachalam had a more sprawly network than Fazenda Parque Recreio in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.