Benin City 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 Benin City plotted against Edo and Nigeria. While Edo and Nigeria both followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase, Benin City's new street additions followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Benin City's incremental SNDi rose from 2.71 to 2.98 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Benin City ranked 6th out of 12 cities in Edo and 161st 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?

• Ranchi, India
• Sialkot, Pakistan
• Mandalay, Myanmar
• Visakhapatnam, India
• Banha, Egypt
• Bareilly, India

While Ranchi and Visakhapatnam both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, Benin City fluctuated in its street-construction patterns in new street additions. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Benin City and Ranchi have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.