Rishikesh 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 Rishikesh plotted against Uttarakhand and India. The SNDi of new construction in Rishikesh rose steadily, compared to Uttarakhand which rose steadily and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Rishikesh's incremental SNDi rose from 5.42 to 5.7 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Rishikesh ranked 11th out of 20 cities in Uttarakhand and 1488th 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?

• Setif, Algeria
• Rajon Swerdlowski, Russia
• Shikohabad, India
• Xichang, China
• Fanling, Hong Kong
• Morogoro, Tanzania

In new street additions, Rishikesh built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Setif fluctuated in its street-construction patterns and Xichang built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved. For the full network, Rishikesh and Setif both became progressively more disconnected, while Xichang grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved. Rishikesh and Setif have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.