Coastal Settlement Planning based on the Network Density in Small Island: A Study on Sulabesi Island, Indonesia

Sulabesi Island, as a small island, is faced with challenges in developing road infrastructure to facilitate community mobility, especially to meet their settlements’ needs. With most settlements located on the coast, this study aims to analyze the road network’s density level based on the building distribution and plan settlements based on connectivity between regions. The method used is a road network density (ND) analysis using ArcGIS 10.5 software. The analysis results show that the density level of the Sulabesi Island road network is still low and only concentrated in one area, Sanana District. There are still unfinished road and bridge network constructions in other areas, so some areas are not yet connected. This condition causes connectivity between regions to be low, and community mobility becomes difficult, especially to meet their basic needs, including distributing their harvests. Even with a road network that cannot connect between regions, it can increase the isolation of a settlement. From this research, it can be a description of the characteristics of settlements on small islands from the aspect of land transportation.