Al Hawiyah 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 Hawiyah plotted against Makkah and Saudi Arabia. The SNDi of new construction in Al Hawiyah was at its lowest in 1991-2005, compared to Makkah which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase and Saudi Arabia which followed a zig-zag trend with an overall increase. Most recently, Al Hawiyah's incremental SNDi rose from 3.53 to 4.13 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Al Hawiyah ranked 8th out of 9 cities in Makkah and 40th 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?

• Narasaraopet, India
• Mahuva, India
• Jhanjharpur, India
• Xiangshan County, China
• Aït Melloul, Morocco
• Adilabad, India

While Narasaraopet and Xiangshan County both fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, Al Hawiyah built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then shifted to more disconnected patterns in new street additions. For the full network, Al Hawiyah became more connected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then grew more sprawly from 1991-2005 onwards, while Narasaraopet became progressively more disconnected and Xiangshan County fluctuated in connectivity. Al Hawiyah and Narasaraopet have been converging in their street-network character since 1975.