Bloomington in context: Street-network sprawl trends
Bloomington in context
The chart above shows SNDi trends for new street additions (left panel) and the entire network (right panel), with Bloomington plotted against Illinois and United States. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Bloomington's incremental SNDi fell from 3.02 to 2.54 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Bloomington ranked 2nd out of 12 cities in Illinois and 37th out of 333 in United States as of 2020.
New Street Additions (2006–2020)
- SNDi value
- 2.54
- Rank in United States
- 20th of 333
- Rank in Illinois
- 1st of 12
Entire Network (Aggregate)
- SNDi value
- 2.0
- Rank in United States
- 37th of 333
- Rank in Illinois
- 2nd of 12
Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.
What about similarly populated cities?
In new street additions, Bloomington built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Vavoua built increasingly disconnected streets over time and Lalpur fluctuated in its street-construction patterns. For the full network, Bloomington and Vavoua both became progressively more disconnected, while Lalpur fluctuated in connectivity. Notably, Bloomington had a more sprawly network than Vavoua in 1975 but the two have since reversed their relative ranking.