Satellite images dating back to 1975 allow researchers to map how millions of cul-de-sacs and dead-ends have proliferated in street networks worldwide. [...]
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences charts a worrying global shift towards more-sprawling and less-hooked-up street networks over time.
— CityLab
The study's authors, Christopher Barrington-Leigh at McGill University and Adam Millard-Ball at UC Santa Cruz, were able to identify the global trend toward urban street-network sprawl by analyzing high-resolution data from OpenStreetMap and satellite imagery of urbanization since 1975 and then measuring the "street-network disconnectedness index (SNDi), based on every mapped node and edge in the world."
The documented global drop in street connectivity due to the proliferation of urban and suburban developments that feature cul-de-sacs, dead-ends, and gated communities should require a "rapid policy response, including regulation and pricing tools," the study suggests, "to avoid further costly lock-in during this current, final phase of the urbanization process."
The researchers write that their street-network measure can predict future climate, energy, health, and social outcomes related to urban form.
2 Comments
Suburban not Urban!
Policy change: go to the largest feeder street and pour a large concrete wall across it so the tribalist motherfuckers buying shit from residential developers can't get their cars out of their "community".
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