London 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 London plotted against England and United Kingdom. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, London's incremental SNDi fell from 4.83 to 3.8 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, London ranked 19th out of 124 cities in England and 23rd out of 143 in United Kingdom as of 2020.

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

What about similarly populated cities?

• Shantou, China
• Lima, Peru
• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Paris, France
• Suzhou, China
• Bogota, Colombia

In new street additions, London and Paris both built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Shantou fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. London and Shantou have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.