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Twin cities

Twin cities are a special case of two neighboring cities or urban centres that grow into a single conurbation – or narrowly separated urban areas – over time. There are no formal criteria, but twin cities are generally comparable in status and size, though not necessarily equal; a city and a substantially smaller suburb would not typically qualify, even if they were once separate. Tri-cities and quad cities are similar phenomena involving three or four municipalities.

This article is about the general concept. For town governments establishing official links, see Sister city. For the area typically called the "Twin Cities" in the United States, see Minneapolis–Saint Paul. For other uses, see Twin city.

A common – but not universal – scenario is two cities that developed concurrently on opposite sides of a river. For example, Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota – one of the most widely known pairs of "Twin Cities" – were founded several miles apart on opposite sides of the Mississippi River, and competed for prominence as they grew.


In some cases, twin cities are separated by a state border, such as Albury (New South Wales) and Wodonga (Victoria) in Australia, on opposite sides of the Murray River. Islamabad and Rawalpindi are the twin cities of Pakistan; Islamabad is the Federal Territory of Pakistan, while Rawalpindi is a city in the Punjab province. Cities on opposite sides of international borders sometimes share enough cultural and historical identity to be seen as twins, such as Haparanda (Sweden) and Tornio (Finland), Leticia (Colombia) and Tabatinga (Brazil), or Valga (Estonia) and Valka (Latvia).


In some cases twin cities eventually merge into a single legal municipality, such as Buda and Pest merging in 1873 into Budapest, Hungary; Brooklyn being annexed by New York City in 1898; or the three ancient cities of Hankou, Hanyang, and Wuchang joining in 1927 into Wuhan, China.


As a single urban area, twin cities may share an airport whose airport codes include both cities' initials, e.g., DFW (Dallas–Fort Worth), LBA (Leeds–Bradford), MSP (Minneapolis–Saint Paul), RDU (Raleigh and Durham), and CAK (Akron–Canton).

and Giza.[1] Triple cities if counting Shubra El Kheima.

Cairo

and Port Fuad

Port Said

from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, is referred to as "the twin cities of proud Ankh and pestilent Morpork"[12]

Ankh-Morpork

Besźel and Ul Qoma in 's novel The City & the City are intertwined twin city-states in Eastern Europe whose inhabitants have trained themselves to only see the city they live in and unsee the city they don't.

China Miéville

and Keystone City, from the current Flash comics, are shown as twin cities. Before the 1985-86 miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths, Central and Keystone are presented as located in the same space but on different parallel Earths.[13]

Central City

and St. Canard were depicted in the cartoon Darkwing Duck as sister cities connected by a bridge, very similar to Oakland and San Francisco.[14][15]

Duckburg

(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. In stories presenting them as twin cities, Gotham City and Metropolis are located on opposite sides of a large bay (identified as Delaware Bay in 1990's The Atlas of the DC Universe), with both cities linked by the Metro-Narrows Bridge,[16] a suspension bridge resembling New York City's Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.[17][18]

Gotham City

Helium, from the series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, consists of the twin cities Greater Helium and Lesser Helium.[19]

Barsoom

List of divided cities

Cross-border town naming

Megacity

List of metropolitan areas that overlap multiple countries

Ecumenopolis

Metropolis

Megalopolis

Sister city