Kuala Lumpur in context: Street-network sprawl trends
Kuala Lumpur in context
The chart above shows SNDi trends for new street additions (left panel) and the entire network (right panel), with Kuala Lumpur plotted against Selangor and Malaysia. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Kuala Lumpur's incremental SNDi rose from 5.56 to 6.48 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Kuala Lumpur ranked 4th out of 5 cities in Selangor and 31st out of 43 in Malaysia as of 2020.
New Street Additions (2006–2020)
- SNDi value
- 6.48
- Rank in Malaysia
- 36th of 43
- Rank in Selangor
- 4th of 5
Entire Network (Aggregate)
- SNDi value
- 4.85
- Rank in Malaysia
- 31st of 43
- Rank in Selangor
- 4th of 5
Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.
What about similarly populated cities?
- Surabaya, Indonesia
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Hangzhou, China
- Chengdu, China
- Nanjing, China
- Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
In new street additions, Kuala Lumpur and Chengdu both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Surabaya fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Notably, Kuala Lumpur had a more connected network than Surabaya in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.