Talk:Sister city

Origin of this page

[Please do not remove or archive this section, for attribution purposes]

This article was created from two former pages, Twin towns and Sister city.

The first of these contained both general information about town twinning (mostly from the European viewpoint) and a large list of twinning arrangements; since the majority of edits were to the list, rather than the information, it was moved to List of twin towns and sister cities - please see the history of that page prior to November 10, 2004 to identify the contributors of that part of the text.
The second page, Sister city, was then merged by hand with the informational text from this first; I realise now I should have moved it here, and done the merge the other way round, so at least that part of the history would be easily accessible, but unless/until an admin merges the histories, you have to access the history of that page seperately, too.
The discussion page for the first page is now at Talk:List of twin towns and sister cities; like the page hitsory, it mostly concerns the list part of the page. Talk:Sister city also retains a small amount of old discussion.

Apologies for any confusion caused during this reorganisation. - IMSoP 21:46, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sister City vs Twin Town

Hi, I work in a UK local authority and there is a difference (at least in the UK) between a Twin Town and a Sister City. A Sister City is where there is a link between local authorities in two similar cities (similarities may or may not include ports, an airport, industrys, size etc). A twinned town is normally organised by an independant society (normally ex-pats or 'philes i.e. Franco-philes etc) normally with the endorsement of the local authority but very often receiving no funding from them.

If someone with more eloquence than myself could update the article, at least a small section within the Europe bit that would be cool. As it stands I think it is a little confusing. IOwnTheLetterO (talk) 16:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Town twinning vs Twin cities

I put the "merge" label lackig a better one.

A clear cut must be done between the two notions. Let us face it: "twin cities" requires a normal disambiguation, rather than tweaking with article names. I am pretty sure that 80% of links to Twin cities must in fact go to "Twin towning".

A significant part of "Twin cities" must be moved to "town twinning", including a part of the list. Mikkalai 02:04, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I doubt it, Twin Cities are adjacent to each other, Town twinning or sister cities, are geographically very far apart. dml 03:16, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

These two pages should stay separate; they discuss two different concepts. As far as I can tell, the list at Twin cities should not be moved to this page. Mikkalai may be right that 80% of the links to Twin cities should go to Town twinning instead; I haven't checked. In that case, maybe the article Twin cities should be moved to another title, and that Twin cities should be a disambiguation page or a redirect to Town twinnning. I don't know. But no merge. I've removed the merge notices from the pages; the notice that was there before was much more helpful. Eugene van der Pijll 13:04, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sorry guys for the confusion. It was late at night, and I was not thinking clearly. I was wrong about 80% as well. May be 4%; e.g., Nyíregyháza, Uzhhorod.

Well, to my surpise, I was almost right after all. Mikkalai 07:23, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

But still, I urge the English language speakers to check whether there really is an ambiguity in the usage of the term twin city/twin town, as my examples of Nyíregyháza & Uzhhorod suggest. If yes, then twin city/twin town must be turned into disambigs.

By the way, Twin (disambiguation) must be updated in any case. Thank you. Mikkalai 18:42, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

European Union

There are completely separate words for these EU assocotians versus our Town twinning. I'll leave it for someone else to split the page, but here is some inter-wiki words to use de:Douzelage, fr:Ville_jumille, it:Jumelage, es:Jumelée or something like hermanadeg. Schlüggell | Talk 19:55, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I think you'll have to clarify your comment, because I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying that some languages (other than English) have different terms for town twinning within the EU and outside it? Are you saying that this page overlooks a distinction in English? Or, if neither of those is what you meant, what exactly do you mean by the respective phrases "these EU associations" and "our Town twinning"? In short, what is the split which you think is necessary?

[As for interwikis, there are some real lost chances for collaboration here - particularly w.r.t. List of twin towns and sister cities, but also, in the other direction, I see de:Städtepartnerschaft seems to have more info than we do here.] - IMSoP 18:35, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Douzelage is a specific "twinning" (not really the right word since there were 12 partners, now more) project - see douzelage.org. Rd232 22:15, 14 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Note: the above was changed by a non-logged in user to the following (I've crossed out the signature to clarify that this is not the original comment). If this was you changing your own comment, Rd232, fair enough (though slightly confusing); if not, it's a little odd - changing a comment signed by somebody else is like trying to change what they said. If you just meant to add to it, you should indicate that you are doing so somehow. - IMSoP 14:03, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Douzelage is a very specific "twinning" project. Its name is composed by the french word for twinning: "Jumelage" and the 12 (french: douze) partner towns at the moment when it was founded in 1991. Today the Douzelage has 20 member towns) - see douzelage.org. ~~Rd232 22:15, 14 September 2005 (UTC)~~[reply]

Contradiction

Isn't the phrase "...a comprehensive, though incomplete, list of..." a contradiction?

Yes. Changed to 'substantial'.

And here's another:

The very first official town twinning arrangement in the world was established in 1930 between the German city of Wiesbaden and the Austrian city of Klagenfurt. The practice of town twinning was developed in Europe after the Second World War as a way to bring European people into a closer understanding of each other and to promote cross-border projects of mutual benefit.

I don't know the history, but one of those has to be right, and the other wrong. Is the word "developed" used here to mean "further developed"?

US-Russia

Text dump, to be processed. Please remove when done.

Eugene, OR & Irkutsk
Flagstaff, AZ & Barnaul
Jacksonville, FL Murmansk
La Crosse, WI & Dubna
Lansing, MI & Kuybushevsky District, St. Petersburg
Louisville, KY & Perm
Oakland, CA & Nakhodka
Philadelphia, PA & Nizhny Novgorod
Richmond, IN & Serpukhov
State of Maryland & Leningrad Oblast/City of St. Petersburg

mikka (t) 03:26, 2 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sister Cities: List or Paragraph...???

User:Derek.cashman wants to change, and thinks, that all “Sister cities” lists in articles should be converted/changed to “paragraph” form. I don’t want to. Can you imagine a lists of 26 sister cities, like for Istanbul, and trying to read it in paragraph form? Please read my opinion and vote. WikiDon 04:15, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Politically Correct

If we have to start using Mailperson and Policeperson and fisherperson, it should be person-city. As a male, i am outright offended by this display of pure sexism and gender oriented discrimination. I move that this article and all of its contents either be changed to be more gender nuetral, or deleted in its entirety.--Gephart 06:00, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If this is not a joke, I apologise for laughing when I read it; if it is, I apologise for taking it so seriously in the following sentences ;). If you are serious, the word you are looking for (meaning "either brother or sister") is "sibling", and therefore "sibling cities"; of course, "twin towns" is already gender neutral, and is the term used in large portions of the world. What's more, Wikipedia has a policy of No Original Research - we're here to report what is already true, not to propogate new ideas. Consequently, it would only be acceptable to change the page if a substantial or influential group of people (e.g. large numbers of Americans, or Sister Cities International) began using or advocating such a usage. - IMSoP 13:05, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me, but I consider crossing out my entire comment to be extremely rude, especially given that you gave no explanation, not even an edit summary. I'm sorry if you found my response unacceptable in some way, I wasn't trying to be confrontational, just to give a balanced response to your suggestion. Or maybe you meant to retract your statement (which makes more sense than retracting someone else's)? Either way, perhaps you could say what you think of the points I made. - IMSoP 16:21, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Don't fight! Sister can also mean brother and brother can also mean sister!—Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.240.234.204 (talk)

To be clear: Both brother and sister suck! Why? Because people are nothing, compared to animals!—Preceding unsigned comment added by LuckyAfterAll (talk • contribs)

Neither of these comments seems clear to me. --BigChicken 11:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Standardization of term and form on city pages

There seems to be no standard form for the section of the pages of cities with twinned cities. Therefore, I propose the standard usage of "Twinned Cities" on the sections dealing with them, with a link to "Town twinning" in the title of the section.

This seems a noble idea (though whether this is the best place to mention it, I'm not sure; a Wikipedia:WikiProject might be better), but note that section headings don't generally have Multiple Caps, so "Twinned cities" would be more in keeping with general style. Also, I'm not sure I like the idea of links inside headings - they can sometimes look somewhat ugly, and definitely confusing; better to just say "<name_of_town> is [[Town twinning|twinned]] with...". This is assuming I've understood you right of course, which may not be the case... - IMSoP 18:50, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This page confuses some people...

As to what exactly a twin city/sister city is, and it's purpose. Better explanation please? What do sister cities do?

I don't get it.

I don't understand this at all.

The twinning concept? You're not alone - a common belief in the UK about local government corruption is that the main reason for towns entering twinning arrangements is so that councillors can go on holidays to said twin town on council expenses. Timrollpickering 13:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, I also have no idea what the benefits are of this habit. Andries (talk) 17:07, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A cynic would say it's a chance for town councillors to get free trips (away from their wives?) 82.69.90.226 (talk) 18:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Correction

The article mistakenly attributed the first european twon twinning as being between a german and an autrian town in 1930 whereas my home town of Keighley, in West Yorkshire, Northern England was twinned with the French town of Poix du Nord in 1920. I don't know how to add citations but here are a couple of links http://www.sedbergh.org.uk/twinning/history/eu.html#a1 http://www.bradford.gov.uk/life_in_the_community/twin_towns_and_villages/ . As i understand it this was the first official twinning in the world not just in Europe.

Better Description

I was searching this article in search of some information, but I didn't get a single answer I was looking for. You really need a better description of town twinning.

Loghead1 18:27, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When...????

When did Coventry, UK twinned with Stalingrad, Russia??? It has been said that these were ever (and I think officially) the first to twin themselves... (See the Europe section of the article) -Pika ten10 (talk) 07:19, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Logical Impossibility

Am I really the only one to spot the flaw with this sentence: "Coventry, United Kingdom was the first ever city to "twin" with another city (Stalingrad, Soviet Union)"? How can ONE city be the first ever to twin? Surely you need TWO citites to twin, therefore there must have been two that twinned at the same time ... ? --Stenun (talk) 00:53, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could they possibly mean Stalingrad? Derp.

What is the purpose...

..of town twinning? I don't understand. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.37.54.143 (talk) 21:25, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Its like walking up to a person and saying "lets be friends". Twinned towns share culture, as well as tourist destinations. The two towns usually have something in common before they are twinned, like a similar sized population - for example.(124.197.36.69 (talk) 04:41, 12 August 2008 (UTC))[reply]

Are we sure this isn't just a gimmick for Sister Cities International to make money?! This whole "sister cities" thing just seems to clutter the wikipedia pages for cities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.96.237.92 (talk) 16:10, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Coventry

I see from two previous comments that I am not the first person to raise questions about the claim that "the first ever" instance of town twinning was supposedly between Coventry and Stalingrad. When I read that statement I immediately wondered if it was true -- both with respect to being "the first ever", and with respect to Coventry being twinned with Stalingrad. Especially in light of the later statement that Coventry twinned with Dresden -- both of which were devastated by aerial bombardment during WW2 -- the assertion re Stalingrad needs verification. Cgingold (talk) 13:29, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Needs a concrete description

We've got a nebulous description of some sort of vague general concept, and then a bunch of examples that leave you thinking "wait - did I miss something?"

There is all this talk of which cities first did this in the modern, official sense, but no explanation of what on earth that entails. Are there certain typical economic arrangements? Do they trade academics? Is it a political thing? If it is, howso? From this article, it's anybody's guess.

We need the little overview, then a section describing the details ("Modern sister cities typically do this, this, this and this, with such and such goal, etc"). THEN all the examples.
98.25.41.99 (talk) 19:27, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's vague because honestly, no one really knows what the heck a sister city is. In fact, if it weren't for Wikipedia triviaphiles, no one would even have known the term "sister city." That's right, mentioning "sister city" is just another weaselly form of the now-deprecated trivia section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.42.72.226 (talk) 04:28, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]