Darjeeling 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 Darjeeling plotted against West Bengal and India. The SNDi of new construction in Darjeeling was at its lowest in 1991-2005, compared to West Bengal which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase and India which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Darjeeling's incremental SNDi rose from 8.98 to 9.17 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Darjeeling ranked 133rd out of 140 cities in West Bengal and 1840th 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?

• Mar del Plata, Argentina
• Yichun, China
• Izhevsk, Russia
• Maoming, China
• Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine
• Krasnoyarsk, Russia

While Mar del Plata and Maoming both fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, Darjeeling built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then shifted to more disconnected patterns in new street additions. For the full network, Darjeeling became progressively more connected, while Mar del Plata became progressively more disconnected and Maoming fluctuated in connectivity.