Al Qurayyat 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 Al Qurayyat plotted against Al Jawf and Saudi Arabia. The SNDi of new construction in Al Qurayyat fell steadily, compared to Al Jawf which was at its lowest in 1991-2005 and Saudi Arabia which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Al Qurayyat's incremental SNDi fell from 2.36 to 2.33 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Al Qurayyat ranked 2nd out of 2 cities in Al Jawf and 11th out of 44 in Saudi Arabia as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Xixia, China
• Hitachinaka, Japan
• Keshod, India
• Barentu, Eritrea
• Khazan Gedid, Sudan
• Chinandega, Nicaragua

In new street additions, Al Qurayyat built increasingly connected streets over time, while Xixia built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved and Barentu built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. For the full network, Al Qurayyat became progressively more connected, while Xixia grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved and Barentu became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards. Notably, Al Qurayyat had a more sprawly network than Barentu in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.