San Diego in context: Street-network sprawl trends
San Diego in context
The chart above shows SNDi trends for new street additions (left panel) and the entire network (right panel), with San Diego plotted against California and United States. While California and United States both peaked in 1991-2005, San Diego's new street additions peaked in 1991-2005. Most recently, San Diego's incremental SNDi fell from 6.11 to 5.0 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, San Diego ranked 41st out of 60 cities in California and 256th out of 333 in United States as of 2020.
New Street Additions (2006–2020)
- SNDi value
- 5.0
- Rank in United States
- 253rd of 333
- Rank in California
- 51st of 60
Entire Network (Aggregate)
- SNDi value
- 4.08
- Rank in United States
- 256th of 333
- Rank in California
- 41st of 60
Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.
What about similarly populated cities?
While Warsaw and Beirut both built increasingly disconnected streets over time, San Diego 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. San Diego and Beirut have been converging in their street-network character since 1975.