Short description:

This book provides a comprehensive overview of twin and border cities across the world. Drawing on examples of both internal and cross border twin cities, it explores the constant and changing features of twinned communities over time. The chapters explore a variety of urban formations including independent cities that are proximately located, cities that have merged over time, cities divided by conflict or treaty, and cities that are twinned across different countries. The relationship between cities and municipal and international borders is explored, as well as the extent to which these are changing or remaining constant in the context of conurbanisation, Europeanisation and globalisation.

Long description:

This dynamic international collection provides a comprehensive overview of twin cities on administrative and international borders across the world. Drawing on contemporary and historical examples, it documents constant and changing features of twinned communities over time.

The chapters explore a variety of urban formations including independent cities located side-by-side; cities that have merged over decades or even centuries and those projected to merge; cities partitioned by treaties and cities duplicated in pursuit of better security, intensified trade or both between neighbouring countries. From Europe to Africa, North America to the Middle East, South America to Asia, this book focuses on relationships between cities, citizens and municipal/international borders. A cartographical contents and editorial commentary guide readers through diverse contributions. The authors ask how far cities are changing or remaining constant in the context of conurbanisation, Europeanisation and globalization. The book provides a glimpse into the variety of roles twin cities can play globally: from laboratories of integration and para-diplomatic actors to economic and cultural brokers.

This is a valuable, engaging resource for researchers in the fields of geography, urban studies, border studies, international relations and global development. It will be of great use to individuals involved in twin-city initiatives and general readers.

"From Europe to Africa, North America to the Middle East, South America to Asia, this book focuses on relationships between cities, citizens and municipal/international borders. A cartographical contents and editorial commentary guide readers through diverse contributions. The authors ask how far cities are changing or remaining constant in the context of conurbanisation, Europeanisation and globalization. This book provides a glimspe into the variety of roles twin cities can play globally: from laboratories of integration and para-diplomatic actors to economic and cultural brokers."

-Halei Lamb, The Forest-Blade, Swainsboro, Georgia

"All in all, Twin Cities is a timely contribution that should appeal to those who study the intricate interdependencies of multiple twin cities from a comparative perspective. Moreover, it will engage readers interested in selected cases presented in the anthology. (...). It will be a vital source of inspiration for scholars and practitioners in the growing field of Border(lands) Studies more generally and Twin City research more particularly."

-Fabio Santos, Freie Universität Berlin, Cross-Border Review

Table of Contents:

Introduction and overview (John Garrard and Ekaterina Mikhailova) PART I: INTRANATIONAL TWIN CITIES 1. Minneapolis?St. Paul: the iconic twins? (Mary Lethert Wingerd and John Garrard) 2. ?Too near neighbours to be good friends?: Manchester and Salford (John Garrard and Alan Kidd) 3. NewcastleGateshead: a dynamic partnership (Rebecca Wilbraham) 4. The defence of old interests in a new city: Buda and Pest in the late nineteenth century (László Csorba) 5. Urban Lagos 1927?67: a tale of two cities? (Lanre Davies) 6. Twin Cities in African history: a comparative analysis of the 19^th and 20^th century capitals of Borno (Usman Ladan) 7. Indian twin cities (John Garrard and Ekaterina Mikhailova) 8. Women?s everyday travel experiences in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan (Waheed Ahmed, Muhammad Imran, and Regina Scheyvens) 9. Hong Kong and Shenzhen: twins, rivals or potential megacity? (Marco Bontje) PART II: INTERNATIONAL TWIN CITIES 10. Tabatinga, Leticia and Santa Rosa: emergence, transformation and merging of paired and triple cities in the Amazon (Carlos Zárate Botía and Jorge Aponte Motta) 11. The resiliency of Los Dos Laredos (John C. Kilburn and Sara A. Buentello) 12. Border-city pairs in Europe and North America: spatial dimensions of integration and separation (Francisco Lara-Valencia and Sylwia Dołzbłasz) 13. Spatial portrait of twin towns on the Danube (Máté Tamáska) 14. Central European cross-border towns: an overview (Jarosław Jańczak) 15. Comines and Wervik: on the three-way divide of two historically integral towns (Peter Martyn) 16. Border twin cities in the Baltic Area: anomalies or nexuses of mutual benefit? (Thomas Lundén) 17. City-twinning as local foreign policy: the case of Kirkenes?Nikel (Pertti Joenniemi) 18. The Finnish?Russian border as a developmental resource: the case of Imatra and Svetogorsk (Matti Fritsch, Sarolta Németh and Heikki Eskelinen) 19. Impacts of town-twining on the communities of Imatra and Svetogorsk through different fields of cross-border cooperation (Ekaterina Mikhailova and Sarolta Németh) 20. Blagoveshchensk and Heihe: (un)contested twin cities on the Sino-Russian border? (Ekaterina Mikhailova, Chung-Tong Wu and Ilya Chubarov) 21. Flows making places, borders making flows: the rise of Mae Sot?Myawaddy hub in the Thai?Burmese borderland (Indr? Balčait?) 22. So close, so far: national identity and political legitimacy in UAE?Oman border cities (Marc Valeri) Conclusion (Ekaterina Mikhailova and John Garrard)