Siliguri 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 Siliguri plotted against West Bengal and India. The SNDi of new construction in Siliguri 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, Siliguri's incremental SNDi rose from 4.71 to 6.56 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Siliguri ranked 31st out of 140 cities in West Bengal and 915th 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?

• Yingkou, China
• Kandahar, Afghanistan
• Dongying, China
• Bogura, Bangladesh
• Zhangjiakou, China
• Zhumadian, China

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