Loughborough 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 Loughborough plotted against England and United Kingdom. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Loughborough's incremental SNDi fell from 4.44 to 3.49 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Loughborough ranked 21st out of 124 cities in England and 26th 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?

• Dehdasht, Iran
• Gurlan, Uzbekistan
• Kampung Rinching Hulu, Malaysia
• Wenxi, China
• Gjakova, Kosovo
• Buheung-dong, North Korea

In new street additions, Loughborough built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Dehdasht built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns and Wenxi built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. Looking at the full network, Dehdasht and Wenxi both became more connected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then grew more sprawly from 1991-2005 onwards, while Loughborough became progressively more disconnected. Loughborough and Dehdasht have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.