Cardiff in context: Street-network sprawl trends
Cardiff in context
The chart above shows SNDi trends for new street additions (left panel) and the entire network (right panel), with Cardiff plotted against Wales and United Kingdom. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Cardiff's incremental SNDi fell from 5.45 to 5.25 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Cardiff ranked 3rd out of 5 cities in Wales and 88th out of 143 in United Kingdom as of 2020.
New Street Additions (2006–2020)
- SNDi value
- 5.25
- Rank in United Kingdom
- 111th of 143
- Rank in Wales
- 3rd of 5
Entire Network (Aggregate)
- SNDi value
- 3.74
- Rank in United Kingdom
- 88th of 143
- Rank in Wales
- 3rd of 5
Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.
What about similarly populated cities?
- Tirunelveli, India
- Corrientes, Argentina
- Jiashan, China
- Sareyn, Iran
- Phuket, Thailand
- Kota Bharu, Malaysia
In new street additions, Cardiff and Tirunelveli both built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Sareyn built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. For the full network, Cardiff and Tirunelveli both became progressively more disconnected, while Sareyn became progressively more connected. Notably, Cardiff had a more connected network than Sareyn in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.