Calabar 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 Calabar plotted against Cross River and Nigeria. While Cross River and Nigeria both followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase, Calabar's new street additions followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Calabar's incremental SNDi rose from 5.2 to 5.97 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Calabar ranked 6th out of 6 cities in Cross River and 364th out of 422 in Nigeria as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• El Paso, United States
• Djibouti, Djibouti
• Otsu, Japan
• Fuxin, China
• Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
• Port Louis, Mauritius

In new street additions, Calabar fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, while El Paso fluctuated in its street-construction patterns and Fuxin built increasingly disconnected streets over time. For the full network, Calabar and Fuxin both became progressively more disconnected, while El Paso became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards. Calabar and El Paso have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.