Manchester 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 Manchester plotted against England and United Kingdom. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Manchester's incremental SNDi fell from 4.49 to 3.92 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Manchester ranked 34th out of 124 cities in England and 41st 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?

• Lanzhou, China
• Daegu, South Korea
• Tasikmalaya, Indonesia
• Rome, Italy
• Kollam, India
• Lusaka, Zambia

While Lanzhou and Rome both fluctuated in its street-construction patterns, Manchester built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved in new street additions. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Manchester and Rome have been converging in their street-network character since 1975.