Pavia 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 Pavia plotted against Lombardia and Italy. While Lombardia and Italy both peaked in 1991-2005, Pavia's new street additions peaked in 1991-2005. Most recently, Pavia's incremental SNDi fell from 3.2 to 2.92 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Pavia ranked 2nd out of 11 cities in Lombardia and 22nd out of 88 in Italy as of 2020.

Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.

What about similarly populated cities?

• Huacheng, China
• Arzew, Algeria
• Navapur, India
• Wuping, China
• Hobart, Australia
• Axum, Ethiopia

In new street additions, Pavia built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Huacheng built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns and Wuping fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full network, Pavia and Wuping both became progressively more disconnected, while Huacheng became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards. Notably, Pavia had a more sprawly network than Wuping in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.