A Global Assessment of Street-Network Sprawl

Disconnected urban street networks, which the authors call “street-network sprawl,” are strongly associated with increased vehicle travel, energy use and CO2 emissions, as shown by previous research in Europe and North America. In this paper, the authors provide the first systematic and globally commensurable measures of street-network sprawl based on graph-theoretic and geographic concepts. The authors compute these measures for the entire Earth at the highest possible resolution. The authors generate a summary scalar measure for street-network sprawl, the Street-Network Disconnectedness index (SNDi), as well as a data-driven multidimensional classification that identifies eight empirical street-network types that span the spectrum of connectivity, from gridiron to dendritic (tree-like) networks. The qualitative validation shows that both the scalar measure and the multidimensional one are meaningfully comparable within and across countries, and successfully capture varied dimensions of walkability and urban development. The authors further show that in select high-income countries, the measures explain cross-sectional variation in household transportation decisions. The authors aggregate the measures to the scale of countries, cities, and smaller geographies and describe patterns in street-network sprawl around the world. Latin America, Japan, Southern Europe and North Africa stand out for their low levels of street-network sprawl, while the highest levels are found in the United States, Northern Europe, and Southeast Asia.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABJ60 Standing Committee on Geographic Information Science and Applications.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Barrington-Leigh, Chris
  • Millard-Ball, Adam
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2019-1-13 to 2019-1-17
• Date: 2019

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: References;
• Pagination: 4p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Classification; Countries; Evaluation and assessment; Geography; Networks; Streets; Urban development; Urban sprawl; Validation; Walkability
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01697343
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 19-00577
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 1 2019 3:50PM