Purulia 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 Purulia plotted against West Bengal and India. The SNDi of new construction in Purulia rose steadily, 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, Purulia's incremental SNDi rose from 5.2 to 6.06 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Purulia ranked 35th out of 140 cities in West Bengal and 971st 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?

• Wad Madanī, Sudan
• Bauru, Brazil
• Jiyuan, China
• Catia La Mar [La Guaira], Venezuela
• Korba, India
• Dhubri, India

In new street additions, Purulia and Wad Madanī both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Catia La Mar [La Guaira] fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Purulia and Wad Madanī have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.