Lalitpur 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 Lalitpur plotted against Uttar Pradesh and India. The SNDi of new construction in Lalitpur rose steadily, 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, Lalitpur's incremental SNDi rose from 4.02 to 4.69 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Lalitpur ranked 149th out of 291 cities in Uttar Pradesh and 1060th 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?

• Shengzhou, China
• Kigoma, Tanzania
• Linqing, China
• Leiden, Netherlands
• Nawada, India
• Ningjiang, China

In new street additions, Lalitpur built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Shengzhou built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved and Leiden built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved. For the full network, Lalitpur and Leiden both became progressively more disconnected, while Shengzhou grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved. Lalitpur and Shengzhou have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.