Twin Cities across Five Continents Interactions and Tensions on Urban Borders

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.

List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements List of contributors Chapter 1: Introduction: Towards a Global Overview of Twin City Studies Ekaterina Mikhailova Part 1: Intranational Twin Cities Chapter 2: Twin Cities in Medieval England: the Case of Small Towns’ Development Anna Anisimova Chapter 3: The Continued Evolution of Fort William and Port Arthur into the City of Thunder Bay, Ontario, CanadaMichel S. Beaulieu and Jenna L. Kirker Chapter 4: Banana-Benders and Cockroaches: Cross-Border Planning for Gold Coast-Tweed Heads Paul Burton and Aysin Dedekorkut-Howes Chapter 5: Chandigarh Tri-city: Between Conflict and Co-operation Ganeshwari Singh, Simrit Kahlon and Ekaterina Mikhailova Chapter 6: Embryonic Twin Cities: Reggio Calabria and Messina in Italy Dario Musolino and Luigi Pellegrino Part 2: International Twin Cities A) in Europe Chapter 7: Prussian Border Twin Towns: The Urban Geopolitics of an Amorphous Territorial State Thomas Lundén Chapter 8: Two Generations of Eurocities along the Northern Section of the Spanish-Portuguese Border Juan-M. Trillo-Santamaría, Valerià Paül and Roberto Vila-Lage Chapter 9: The Past upon which the Future Dwells: Lines and Divisions in Former Yugoslavia Dorte Jagetic Andersen Part 2: International Twin Cities B) in the Middle East and in Africa Chapter 10: Aqaba and Eilat: Twenty-Five Years of 'Good Neighborly Relations' in a Post Conflict EnvironmentTamar Arieli Chapter 11: Lomé and Aflao: Ambivalent Affinity at the Togo-Ghana BorderPaul Nugent Chapter 12: Ketu and Imeko: Yoruba Twin Cities astride Bénin-Nigeria Border in West Africa Anthony Asiwaju Part 2: International Twin CitiesC) in Asia Chapter 13: Dandong and Sinuiju: Twin Towns on a Fragile Border Tony Michell Chapter 14: Zabaikalsk and Manzhouli: Dynamic Asymmetry Vladimir Kolosov Chapter 15: Khorgos – the Making of an Unequal Twin on the Sino-Kazakh BorderVerena La Mela Part 2: International Twin Cities D) in South America Chapter 16: Transborder Dwelling in Albina (Suriname) and Saint-Laurent (French Guiana) on the Lower Maroni Clémence Léobal Chapter 17: The Oyapock River Bridge as a One-way Street: (Un)bridgeable Inequalities in Saint-Georges (French Guiana) and Oiapoque (Brazil) Fabio Santos Chapter 18: The Everyday of the Twin Cities of Chuí (Brazil) and Chuy (Uruguay): a Semiotic Analysis Gianlluca Simi Chapter 19: ‘You Can't Have One Without the Other’: Bilateral Relations between Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este and Brazil’s Foz do Iguaçu Omri Elmaleh Part 2: International Twin Cities E) in North America and the Caribbean Chapter 20: Niagara Twin Cities: ‘Living Apart Together’ on the Canada-US Border Nick Baxter-Moore and Munroe Eagles Chapter 21: Asylees, Removals, Returnees: Mexican Border Cities Response and Adaptation to Mixed Migratory FlowsHilda Garcia-Perez and Francisco Lara-Valencia Chapter 22: Ouanaminthe and Dajaboìn: Two Unequal Cities on the Haitian-Dominican Border Lena Poschet El Moudden Part 3: Twin Cities in Fiction and Editors' Dreams Chapter 23: Twin Cities in China Miéville’s FictionCatherine Olea Johansen, Ruben Moi, Ekaterina Mikhailova and John Garrard Chapter 24: Conclusion: The twins that got awayJohn Garrard Index

Ekaterina Mikhailova is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Geography and Environment, University of Geneva and Visiting Lecturer at the Graduate Institute of International Development Studies (Swit\erland). Ekaterina’s work lies at the crossroads of urban studies, border studies and Russian studies. John Garrard was Senior Lecturer in Politics and Contemporary History at Salford University (UK) until 2011. Although primarily a historian, his central teaching and research interests have bordered with political science.