Colombo [Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte] 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 Colombo [Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte] plotted against Gampaha and Sri Lanka. While Gampaha and Sri Lanka both rose steadily, Colombo [Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte]'s new street additions rose steadily. Most recently, Colombo [Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte]'s incremental SNDi rose from 6.71 to 7.68 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Colombo [Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte] ranked 1st out of 1 cities in Gampaha and 17th out of 21 in Sri Lanka as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Zhengzhou, China
• Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
• Kozhikode, India
• Hefei, China
• Saint Petersburg, Russia
• Kanpur, India

In new street additions, Colombo [Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte] built increasingly disconnected streets over time, while Zhengzhou built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved and Hefei fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full network, Colombo [Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte] and Hefei both became progressively more disconnected, while Zhengzhou grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved. Colombo [Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte] and Zhengzhou have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.