New Bedford 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 New Bedford plotted against Massachusetts and United States. While Massachusetts and United States both peaked in 1991-2005, New Bedford's new street additions peaked in 1991-2005. Most recently, New Bedford's incremental SNDi fell from 5.78 to 4.01 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, New Bedford ranked 1st out of 10 cities in Massachusetts and 40th 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?

• Meishan, China
• Hidalgo del Parral, México
• 卞庄, China
• Hasanpur, India
• Sehwan, Pakistan
• Ahmadpur, India

In new street additions, New Bedford built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Meishan built increasingly disconnected streets over time and Hasanpur built increasingly connected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then shifted to more disconnected patterns. For the full network, New Bedford and Meishan both became progressively more disconnected, while Hasanpur became more connected from 1975 through 1991-2005, then grew more sprawly from 1991-2005 onwards.