I just finished reading Triumph of Straight Dope when a perplexing question was put to me by some friends, after internet searches served to be less than informative, I knew exactly who to turn to…the Teeming Millions. So without further ado…here is my quandry…
What is a “Sister City”?
There is one organization I found on the internet, Sister Cities International (SCI), that describes themselves as “a nonprofit citizen diplomacy network creating and strengthening partnerships between U.S. and international communities in an effort to increase global cooperation at the municipal level, to promote cultural understanding and to stimulate economic development. SCI leads the movement for local community development and volunteer action by motivating and empowering private citizens, municipal officials and business leaders to conduct long-term programs of mutual benefit.” They also have a list of Goals (Develop,
Provide, Create, Stimulate, Collaborate) which they describe in detail.
This is all well and good, but what does it all mean? How do they go about doing accomplishing these goals? In the city where I live, there is a sign as you enter the city that has a listing of 7-10 “sister cities.” How does your city become a “sister city”? How do they choose them and is there a limit to how many sister cities you can have? I have never heard of any activities in my community related to this endeavor.
As I understand it, your city contacts one of the organizations, and they pair you up with some furrin city. Then you swap Christmas or Yom Kippur or Ramadan or Tet or some other holiday cards, send each other samples of “local culture” (like local cheese, or sausages made from dockweed, or beer made from mare’s milk), and put up a sign at the city limits that proclaims how “international” your town is. It was a real big deal back in the 60’s to get your town to pair with a town in the USSR, because somehow that made global thermonuclear war less likely to happen. Personally, I always thought if the Russkis got a real taste of local small-town politics, they’d have nuked us out of pity.
The only thing I know is that Montevideo, Uruguay has a sister city in Minnesota, also called Montevideo (formerly, I think, Chippewa City) This page talks about the celebrations related to the status of sister cities; however, I can´t recall ever hearing of any corresponding activities here. AFAIK most people have never heard about Montevideo MN.
As far as I remember once a year a group of people travel north to visit the city and take part on the celebrations, but then again, that is seldom heard of.
In Europe, it’s known as “twin towns”. Just about anywhere of any size has twins, triplets or even quadruplets - and most of them do nothing whatsoever with each other.
Yeah, sounds about right. Chicago has a plethora of Sister Cities - you can see banners for all of them at O’Hare - but I don’t know that we are actually supposed to do anything with any of them. Like Chicago, they’re all big cities (off the top of my head, Stockholm, Warsaw, and Calcutta are all Sister Cities) that are probably too busy doing real stuff.
Los Angeles has 20 sister cities:
Athens
Auckland
Berlin
Bordeaux
Busan, Korea
Eilat, Israel
Giza, Egypt
Guangzhou
Jakarta
Kaunas, Lithuania
Lusaka, Zambia
Makati, Philippines
Mexico City
Mumbai, India
Nagoya
Salvador, Brazil
Split, Croatia (most recent edition)
St. Petersburg
Taipei
Vancouver
Tehran used to be one of L.A.'s sister cities, but it got booted out. As did the little street that was named for it too.
Actually, you might be surprised. A dear friend of mine worked for the Sister Cities program in Chicago (it’s part of the Dept. of Cultural Affairs) until she left for the Peace Corps a couple of years ago. She used to organize all sorts of exchanges of government and NGO people - I remember one time in particular, she arranged a visit for a bunch of Ukrainian firemen, so they could see how we fight fires differently here in the U.S. I also remember a bunch of marathon runners she hosted from all over Eastern Europe, who had come to run a marathon here. She would round up people in various government, business, and community organizations to show them the ropes.
It’s the same general concept as student exchanges, except for professionals, especially in government and the arts, and the exchanges are usually much shorter-term (a couple of weeks seemed to be the norm). I’m a big believer in the value of micro-level exchanges like that, myself; you can never be exposed to too many different ideas or ways of doing things.
(Oddly enough, this particular friend just got married a couple of weeks ago to a guy she met in the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan. As I got off the plane in Albuquerque for her wedding, I saw a huge mural in the airport listing Albuquerque’s sister cities…which include Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. )
There’s a list of some twin towns =http://www.fact-index.com/t/tw/twin_towns.htmlhere - from the plaing stoopid (Birmingham with Milan? Isn’t Milan demeaned slightly by that?) to the hysterically ironic (Hull with Freetown, Sierra Leone)
Springfield, Illinois has a sister city. Ashikaga, Japan.
Apparently, the two cities are very similar. Similar populations (c. 115,000 each); both urban centers in the middle of an agricultural area. And I think Ashikaga may be the capital of its prefecture, as Springfield is the capital of its state.
Delegations from Ashikaga come about twice a year. What they do while they’re here is a mystery. We also send a handful of our teenagers over there for an exchange program that lests a semester.
So for the benefit of those of us across the pond, why is the association of Hull with Freetown hysterically ironic? I enjoy hysterical irony as much as the next guy, but I need more info to fully appreciate it.
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