Salalah 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 Salalah plotted against Dhofar and Oman. The SNDi of new construction in Salalah peaked in 1976-1990, compared to Dhofar which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase and Oman which peaked in 1991-2005. Most recently, Salalah's incremental SNDi fell from 2.85 to 2.23 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Salalah ranked 1st out of 2 cities in Dhofar and 1st out of 9 in Oman as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Kalay, Myanmar
• Donghai, China
• Guannan, China
• Nijmegen, Netherlands
• Luputa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Limbe, Cameroon

In new street additions, Salalah built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved, while Kalay built increasingly disconnected streets over time and Nijmegen fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. Looking at the full network, Kalay and Nijmegen both became progressively more disconnected, while Salalah grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved. Notably, Salalah had a more sprawly network than Kalay in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.