Full Description
This international collection provides a comprehensive overview of twin cities in different circumstances - from the emergent to the recently amalgamated, on 'soft' and 'hard' borders, with post-colonial heritage, in post-conflict environments and under strain.
With examples from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America, North America and the Caribbean, the volume sees twin cities as intense thermometers for developments in the wider urban world globally. It offers interdisciplinary perspectives that bridge history, politics, culture, economy, geography and other fields, applying these lenses to examples of twin cities in remote places. Providing a comparative approach and drawing on a range of methodologies, the book explores where and how twin cities arise; what twin cities can tell us about international borders; and the way in which some twin cities bear the spatial marks of their colonial past. The chapters explore the impact on twin-city relations of contemporary pressures, such as mass migration, the rise of populism, East-West tensions, international crime, surveillance, rebordering trends and epidemiological risks triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. With case studies across the continents, this volume for the first time extends twin-city debates to fictional imaginings of twin cities.
Twin Cities across Five Continents is a valuable resource for researchers in the fields of anthropology, history, geography, urban studies, border studies, international relations and global development as well as for students in these disciplines.
Contents
1. Introduction: Towards a Global Overview of Twin City Studies. Part 1: Intranational Twin Cities. 2. Twin Cities in Medieval England: the Case of Small Towns' Development. 3. The Continued Evolution of Fort William and Port Arthur into the City of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. 4. Banana-Benders and Cockroaches: Cross-Border Planning for Gold Coast-Tweed Heads. 5. Chandigarh Tri-city: Between Conflict and Co-operation. 6. Embryonic Twin Cities: Reggio Calabria and Messina in Italy. Part 2: International Twin Cities A) in Europe. 7. Prussian Border Twin Towns: The Urban Geopolitics of an Amorphous Territorial State. 8. Two Generations of Eurocities along the Northern Section of the Spanish-Portuguese Border. 9. The Past upon which the Future Dwells: Lines and Divisions in Former Yugoslavia. Part 2: International Twin Cities B) in the Middle East and in Africa. 10. Aqaba and Eilat: Twenty-Five Years of 'Good Neighborly Relations' in a Post Conflict Environment. 11. Lomé and Aflao: Ambivalent Affinity at the Togo-Ghana Border. 12. Ketu and Imeko: Yoruba Twin Cities astride Bénin-Nigeria Border in West Africa. Part 2: International Twin Cities C) in Asia. 13. Dandong and Sinuiju: Twin Towns on a Fragile Border. 14. Zabaikalsk and Manzhouli: Dynamic Asymmetry 15. Khorgos - the Making of an Unequal Twin on the Sino-Kazakh Border. Part 2: International Twin Cities D) in South America. 16. Transborder Dwelling in Albina (Suriname) and Saint-Laurent (French Guiana) on the Lower Maroni. 17. The Oyapock River Bridge as a One-way Street: (Un)bridgeable Inequalities in Saint-Georges (French Guiana) and Oiapoque (Brazil). 18. The Everyday of the Twin Cities of Chuí (Brazil) and Chuy (Uruguay): a Semiotic Analysis. 19. 'You Can't Have One Without the Other': Bilateral Relations between Paraguay's Ciudad del Este and Brazil's Foz do Iguaçu. Part 2: International Twin Cities E) in North America and the Caribbean. 20. Niagara Twin Cities: 'Living Apart Together' on the Canada-US Border. 21. Asylees, Removals, Returnees: Mexican Border Cities Response and Adaptation to Mixed Migratory Flows. 22. Ouanaminthe and Dajaboìn: Two Unequal Cities on the Haitian-Dominican Border. Part 3: Twin Cities in Fiction and Editors' Dreams. 23. Twin Cities in China Miéville's Fiction. 24. Conclusion: The twins that got away.
