Freetown in context: Street-network sprawl trends
Freetown in context
The chart above shows SNDi trends for new street additions (left panel) and the entire network (right panel), with Freetown plotted against Western and Sierra Leone. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Freetown's incremental SNDi rose from 5.43 to 6.39 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Freetown ranked 1st out of 1 cities in Western and 8th out of 12 in Sierra Leone as of 2020.
New Street Additions (2006–2020)
- SNDi value
- 6.39
- Rank in Sierra Leone
- 7th of 12
- Rank in Western
- 1st of 1
Entire Network (Aggregate)
- SNDi value
- 5.04
- Rank in Sierra Leone
- 8th of 12
- Rank in Western
- 1st of 1
Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.
What about similarly populated cities?
- Gorakhpur, India
- Tarogong, Indonesia
- Taizhou, China
- Baotou, China
- Zhangzhou, China
- Gwangju, South Korea
In new street additions, Freetown built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Gorakhpur built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved and Baotou fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Freetown and Gorakhpur have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.