Northampton 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 Northampton plotted against England and United Kingdom. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Northampton's incremental SNDi fell from 4.99 to 3.84 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Northampton ranked 102nd out of 124 cities in England and 114th 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?

• Jiayuguan, China
• Conghua, China
• Charlotte, United States
• Mayiladuthurai, India
• Laixi, China
• Saint-Louis, Senegal

In new street additions, Northampton built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Jiayuguan built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns and Mayiladuthurai built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. Looking at the full network, Jiayuguan and Mayiladuthurai both became more connected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then grew more sprawly from 1991-2005 onwards, while Northampton grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved. Notably, Northampton had a more connected network than Mayiladuthurai in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.