Khalifa City 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 Khalifa City plotted against Abu Dhabi and United Arab Emirates. The SNDi of new construction in Khalifa City fell steadily, compared to Abu Dhabi which peaked in 1991-2005 and United Arab Emirates which rose steadily. Most recently, Khalifa City's incremental SNDi fell from 2.36 to 2.1 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Khalifa City ranked 4th out of 9 cities in Abu Dhabi and 7th out of 15 in United Arab Emirates as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Ankoro, Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Obiaruku, Nigeria
• Um el Qusur, Egypt
• Birma, Egypt
• Una, India
• Ponggok, Indonesia

In new street additions, Khalifa City built increasingly connected streets over time, while Ankoro fluctuated in its street-construction patterns and Birma built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. For the full network, Khalifa City became progressively more connected, while Ankoro fluctuated in connectivity and Birma became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards. Notably, Khalifa City had a more sprawly network than Ankoro in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.