Hamilton 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 Hamilton plotted against Waikato and New Zealand. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Hamilton's incremental SNDi fell from 5.01 to 4.84 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Hamilton ranked 1st out of 1 cities in Waikato and 8th out of 9 in New Zealand as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Tuni, India
• Tomakomai, Japan
• Tirwaganj, India
• Burgos, Spain
• Anand Nagar, India
• Gaochun, China

In new street additions, Hamilton built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Tuni built increasingly disconnected streets over time and Burgos built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved. For the full network, Hamilton and Tuni both became progressively more disconnected, while Burgos grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved. Hamilton and Tuni have been converging in their street-network character since 1975.