Salar 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 Salar plotted against West Bengal and India. The SNDi of new construction in Salar 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, Salar's incremental SNDi rose from 5.74 to 6.03 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Salar ranked 79th out of 140 cities in West Bengal and 1513th 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?

• Wennappuwa, Sri Lanka
• Vandeikya Town, Nigeria
• Tiné-Djagaraba, Chad
• Nimbahera, India
• Bacao, China
• Kropotkin, Russia

In new street additions, Salar built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Wennappuwa built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns and Nimbahera fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full network, Salar became progressively more disconnected, while Wennappuwa became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards and Nimbahera fluctuated in connectivity. Notably, Salar had a more connected network than Wennappuwa in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.