Southport 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 Southport plotted against England and United Kingdom. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Southport's incremental SNDi fell from 7.1 to 1.4 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Southport ranked 13th out of 124 cities in England and 16th 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?

• Kaffrine, Senegal
• Bălți, Moldova
• Morshi, India
• Sikhalasenkosi, South Africa
• Tipitapa, Nicaragua
• Kirishima, Japan

In new street additions, Southport and Sikhalasenkosi both built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Kaffrine built increasingly disconnected streets over time. Looking at the full network, Kaffrine and Sikhalasenkosi both became progressively more disconnected, while Southport grew more disconnected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved. Southport and Kaffrine have been converging in their street-network character since 1975.