page_title: Twin cities
hierarchical_section_title: Twin cities
caption_attribution_description: English: May 10, 2018 Minneapolis, Minnesota This is the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis. Downtown St. Paul can be seen in the distance on the left. 2018-05-10 This content is provided under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution to: Fibonacci Blue
context_page_description: Twin cities are a special case of two cities or urban centres that are founded in close geographic proximity and then grow into each other over time, losing most of their mutual buffer zone.
  There are no precise criteria for twin-cityhood, but to be considered twin cities, the cities involved have to have a similar administrative status and somewhat comparable sizes; a suburb of a much larger population center is usually not considered to form a twin city with it. For example, South San Francisco is not considered a twin city with San Francisco. However, cities considered twinned by proximity do not necessarily match demographically, economically, or politically.
  In many historical cases, cities that grew into each other's space lost their individual identities, and the border or barrier originally separating them became almost irrelevant. An 1873 case of twin cities merging to become a united city is Budapest in Hungary, which began as two settlements facing each other across the Danube at a strategic fording place along a trade route.
context_section_description: Twin cities are a special case of two cities or urban centres that are founded in close geographic proximity and then grow into each other over time, losing most of their mutual buffer zone.
  There are no precise criteria for twin-cityhood, but to be considered twin cities, the cities involved have to have a similar administrative status and somewhat comparable sizes; a suburb of a much larger population center is usually not considered to form a twin city with it. For example, South San Francisco (population about 65,000) is not considered a twin city with San Francisco (population about 850,000). However, cities considered twinned by proximity do not necessarily match demographically, economically, or politically.
  In many historical cases, cities that grew into each other's space lost their individual identities, and the border or barrier originally separating them became almost irrelevant. An 1873 case of twin cities merging to become a united city is Budapest in Hungary, which began as two settlements (Buda and Pest) facing each other across the Danube at a strategic fording place along a trade route.  In China, the three ancient cities of Hankou, Hanyang, and Wuchang, separated by the junction of the Yangtze and Hanjiang rivers, were joined in 1927 into the single entity of Wuhan.
  Twin cities may share an airport into whose airport codes are integrated the component initials, e.g., DFW (Dallas–Fort Worth), LBA (Leeds–Bradford), MSP (Minneapolis-Saint Paul), RDU (Raleigh and Durham, NC), and CAK (Akron–Canton, Ohio).
  In some cases, such as Albury/Wodonga in Australia, the two cities are permanently divided by a state border, often one that strictly adheres to a geographical landmark, such as the Murray River that divides New South Wales from Victoria, and thus Albury from Wodonga. In other cases twin cities can be divided by an international border, but retain a cultural and historical similarity, for example Haparanda (Sweden) and Tornio (Finland), Leticia (Colombia) and Tabatinga (Brazil) or Valga (Estonia) and Valka (Latvia).
caption: High-rise buildings in Minneapolis's Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, with the Downtown Saint Paul skyline visible in the background. Minneapolis' city limits border those of Saint Paul, the capital of Minnesota. From Downtown Minneapolis to Downtown Saint Paul is only 10 miles in length. This gave birth to the nickname of the region, the "Twin Cities" metropolitan area.
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