Pietermaritzburg in context: Street-network sprawl trends
Pietermaritzburg in context
The chart above shows SNDi trends for new street additions (left panel) and the entire network (right panel), with Pietermaritzburg plotted against KwaZulu-Natal and South Africa. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Pietermaritzburg's incremental SNDi rose from 5.95 to 6.58 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Pietermaritzburg ranked 5th out of 8 cities in KwaZulu-Natal and 75th out of 81 in South Africa as of 2020.
New Street Additions (2006–2020)
- SNDi value
- 6.58
- Rank in South Africa
- 71st of 81
- Rank in KwaZulu-Natal
- 5th of 8
Entire Network (Aggregate)
- SNDi value
- 5.08
- Rank in South Africa
- 75th of 81
- Rank in KwaZulu-Natal
- 5th of 8
Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.
What about similarly populated cities?
In new street additions, Pietermaritzburg and Huzhou both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Suez built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Pietermaritzburg and Suez have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.