Gorakhpur 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 Gorakhpur plotted against Uttar Pradesh and India. The SNDi of new construction in Gorakhpur peaked in 1976-1990, compared to Uttar Pradesh which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Gorakhpur's incremental SNDi fell from 4.5 to 4.46 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Gorakhpur ranked 186th out of 291 cities in Uttar Pradesh and 1223rd 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?

• Tarogong, Indonesia
• Taizhou, China
• Liuzhou, China
• Freetown, Sierra Leone
• Baotou, China
• Zhangzhou, China

In new street additions, Gorakhpur built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved, while Tarogong fluctuated in its street-construction patterns and Freetown built increasingly disconnected streets over time. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Gorakhpur and Freetown have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.