San Francisco 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 San Francisco plotted against California and United States. While California and United States both peaked in 1991-2005, San Francisco's new street additions peaked in 1991-2005. Most recently, San Francisco's incremental SNDi fell from 4.42 to 3.69 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, San Francisco ranked 15th out of 60 cities in California and 159th out of 333 in United States as of 2020.

Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.

What about similarly populated cities?

• Chattogram, Bangladesh
• Lucknow, India
• Amman, Jordan
• Kozhikode, India
• Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
• Zhengzhou, China

In new street additions, San Francisco built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Chattogram built increasingly disconnected streets over time and Kozhikode built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. For the full network, San Francisco and Chattogram both became progressively more disconnected, while Kozhikode became more connected from 1975 through 1976-1990, then grew more sprawly from 1976-1990 onwards. San Francisco and Chattogram have been growing further apart in their street-network character since 1975.