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TWIN CITIES

This article is about cities geographically close together; see town twinning and the list of twin towns and sister cities for distant cities linked in a partnership (often called "sister cities"). See Twin Cities (note capitalization) for the metropolitan area of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Twin cities are two towns or cities that are geographically close to each other and may seem to form a single unit, often referred to collectively.

Contents

Definitions

Twin cities are often separated by a river; notable examples include the capital of the medieval Khazar Empire, Atil-Khazaran, which was situated on the western and eastern banks of the Volga River, respectively. Twin cities without this physical barrier more often become a single entity, as with the growth of London from its cores in the City of London and the City of Westminster to encompass many other towns and villages. Winston-Salem, North Carolina is a good American example. One exception is Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, which has always rebuffed any merger referendum, and where the original boundary is the appropriately named "Division Street".

One remarkable example of twin cities is Rivera (Uruguay), with Santana do Livramento (Brazil). With nearly 200,000 inhabitants, this is the only known case of twin cities of this size, belonging to different countries, with no natural limit between them, but only some streets. This border is open; i.e.: one can cross the border with freedom, as being in the same city in the same country. This frontier is dubbed "Frontera de la Paz" (Frontier of Peace), due to the huge integration between both cities. A symbol of this integration is the "Plaza Internacional" (International Square), inaugurated in the year 1943 (during World War II); this is the single known international square in the world.

Perhaps the most famous example of twin cities in the United States is the combination of Minneapolis, Minnesota and Saint Paul, Minnesota, on the banks of the Mississippi River (however, the political boundary of the two cities is not contiguous with the river). Although the metropolitan area of the Twin Cities actually includes seven counties and nearly 200 separate municipalities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul form the urban, cultural and economic core of the area. The region is typically called "The Metro Area" by local media as much as (or more than) "The Twin Cities", and remote residents of the state often call it simply "The Cities". (See Minneapolis-St. Paul.) St. Anthony (not to be confused with St. Anthony Village, a modern city which is a suburb of Minneapolis) was a twin city to Minneapolis in the two cities' youth. Minneapolis, the larger of the two, annexed St. Anthony in the late 1800s.

The Dallas–Fort Worth area is also known for its 'Twin Cities'.

Australian examples include Townsville and Thuringowa, Albury and Wodonga on the New South Wales/Victoria border, and Coolangatta/Tweed Heads on the Queensland/New South Wales border.

Twin cities often share an airport, into whose airport code are integrated the initials of both cities; DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) and MSP (Minneapolis-St. Paul) might be the most famous examples.

Some twin cities form on opposite sides of natural or governmental boundaries as conduits for trade between the two sides. For instance, Albury and Wodonga in south-eastern Australia are on the state border between New South Wales and Victoria, and formed as customs posts when the two states were independent colonies. The border between the United States and Mexico is significant in this respect because there is a chain of twin cities, particularly around the Rio Grande valley. Others began as distinct cities, but growth caused them to merge into each other and assume a common identity; examples include Budapest (Buda and Pest), New York City (five boroughs, historically especially between Manhattan and Brooklyn), Hong Kong (Victoria City and Kowloon) and Thunder Bay (Fort William and Port Arthur).

Note that not all geographically close cities are combined in this way. In the United Kingdom, for example, the cities of Leeds and Bradford are very close, but have strong separate identities and would not see themselves as part of the same entity.

Examples

Examples of twin cities:

One unusual case — Lloydminster, Alberta/Saskatchewan in Canada — may be considered a "twin city", but is in fact incorporated as a single city straddling a provincial border and administered jointly by both provinces.

Another strange occurrence of this is Delmar, Delaware and Delmar, Maryland, who are technically split along State St., and have different mayors and city councils, but share common infrastructure and public works, such as water, police department, and sewage, and also have a third, common council. [1]

Related terms

Tri cities

The term "tri cities" refers to three cities in a similar geographical situation as twin cities. In southeast Washington, for example, Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco are widely known as The Tri-Cities; Pasco is separated from the other two cities by the Columbia River. "Tri-Cities" also refers to an area of Upper East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia; the twin city of Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia constitutes one point along with the Tennessee cities of Kingsport and Johnson City. The Oklahoma cities of Tuttle, Newcastle, and Blanchard (sometimes taken together with the town of Bridge Creek are collectively known as "Tri-Cities".

In south-western Ontario, the Twin Cities of Kitchener-Waterloo in combination with either Cambridge or Guelph become the Tri-Cities. If Guelph is meant, then another name used will be Golden Triangle. This is an example of colloquial conventions being put into flux by demographic and political shifts.

Near the Iguazu Falls there is a group of three urban communities that now live and grow together: Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, and Puerto Iguazu, Argentina.

In northern Poland, by the coast of the Baltic Sea, the cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot, neighbouring each other, form an area known as the Tricity (Trójmiasto).

Quad cities

The term "quad cities" refers to a grouping of four towns similar to that of twin cities/tri-cities. Perhaps the most famous of these are the towns of Davenport, Iowa, Bettendorf, Iowa, Rock Island, Illinois, and Moline, Illinois, in the United States. East Moline, Illinois was later added to the group, and the "quad cities" term now refers to all five collectively. Of these, the Iowa and Illinois towns are separated by the Mississippi River. Another example is the four main cities of the Golden Horseshoe, in southern Ontario (from west to east): Hamilton, Mississauga, Toronto, the largest of the four (and largest in Canada), and Oshawa, the smallest and most easterly.

Megacities

The term for a collection of many cities into a single socioeconomic area is "megalopolis", or "metropolitan area".

Fictional twin cities

Gotham City (the home of Batman) and Metropolis (the home of Superman) have sometimes been presented as twin cities, mainly in 1970s and 1980s stories by DC Comics. The two cities were shown as located on opposite sides of a large bay.

In the current Flash comics, Central City and Keystone City are shown as twin cities; earlier comics presented each city as located in the same space but on different parallel Earths.

In the Discworld novels, Ankh-Morpork is referred to as "the twin cities of proud Ankh and pestilent Morpork", but has been a single political entity in all the books thus far.

In the animated television series The Simpsons, the cities of Springfield and Shelbyville are twin cities with an intense rivalry between each other.

See also