Scunthorpe 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 Scunthorpe plotted against England and United Kingdom. The SNDi of new construction in Scunthorpe rose steadily, compared to England which peaked in 1991-2005 and United Kingdom which peaked in 1991-2005. Most recently, Scunthorpe's incremental SNDi rose from 5.96 to 6.26 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Scunthorpe ranked 88th out of 124 cities in England and 99th 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?

• Tobelo, Indonesia
• Sindelfingen, Germany
• Shwegyin, Myanmar
• Hengshan, China
• Hakkâri, Turkey
• Diinsoor, Somalia

While Tobelo and Hengshan both built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, Scunthorpe built increasingly disconnected streets over time in new street additions. For the full network, Scunthorpe and Hengshan both became progressively more disconnected, while Tobelo grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved. Scunthorpe and Tobelo have been converging in their street-network character since 1975.