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twin cities This article is about cities geographically close together; see town twinning and the list of twin towns and sister cities for distant cities linked in a partnership (often called "sister cities"). See Twin Cities (note capitalization) for the metropolitan area of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. are two towns or cities that are geographically close to each other and may seem to form a single unit, often referred to collectively.

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Twin cities are often separated by a river — twin cities without this physical barrier more often become a single entity, as with the growth of London from its cores in the City of London and the City of Westminster to encompass many other towns and villages. Winston-Salem, North Carolina is a good American example. One exception is Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, which has always rebuffed any merger referendum, and where the original boundary is the appropriately named "Division Street".

Perhaps the most famous example of twin cities in the United States is the combination of Minneapolis, Minnesota and Saint Paul, Minnesota. Although the metropolitan area of the Twin Cities actually includes seven counties and nearly 200 separate municipalities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul form the urban, cultural and economic core of the area. The region is typically called "The Metro Area" by local media as much as (or more than) "The Twin Cities", and remote residents of the state often call it simply "The Cities". (See Minneapolis-St. Paul.) St. Anthony (not to be confused with St. Anthony Village, a modern city which is a suburb of Minneapolis) was a twin city to Minneapolis in the two cities' youth (with no separating river, unlike Minneapolis and St. Paul, which are separated by the Mississippi River). Minneapolis, the larger of the two, annexed St. Anthony in the late 1800s.

The most famous Australian example is that of Northern Queensland cities Townsville and Thuringowa.

Twin cities often share an airport, into whose airport code are integrated the initials of both cities; DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) and MSP (Minneapolis-St. Paul) might be the most famous examples.

Some twin cities form on opposite sides of natural or governmental boundaries as conduits for trade between the two sides. For instance, Albury and Wodonga in south-eastern Australia are on the state border between New South Wales and Victoria, and formed as customs posts when the two states were independent colonies. The border between the United States and Mexico is significant in this respect because there is a chain of twin cities, particularly around the Rio Grande valley. Others began as distinct cities, but growth caused them to merge into each other and assume a common identity; examples include Budapest (Buda and Pest), New York City (five boroughs, historically especially between Manhattan and Brooklyn), Hong Kong (Victoria City and Kowloon) and Thunder Bay (Fort William and Port Arthur).

Note that not all geographically close cities are combined in this way. In the United Kingdom, for example, the cities of Leeds and Bradford are very close, but have strong separate identities and would not see themselves as part of the same entity.

Anaheim – Santa Ana, California, United States (sometimes referred to simply as Orange County or "The O.C.") (U.S.)Duluth, Minnesota – Superior, Wisconsin (Called "The Twin Ports"; both are seaports on Lake Superior)Raleigh – Durham, North Carolina, United States (But also called Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, or the Research Triangle)Riverside – San Bernardino, California, United States (sometimes included with Ontario known as the Inland Empire)Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada – Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, United States (also known as The Soo)

The term "tri cities" refers to three cities in a similar geographical situation as twin cities. In southeast Washington, for example, Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco are widely known as The Tri-Cities; Pasco is separated from the other two cities by the Columbia River. "Tri-Cities" also refers to an area of Upper East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia; the twin city of Bristol, TennesseeVirginia constitutes one point along with the Tennessee cities of Kingsport and Johnson City.

Near the Iguazu Falls there is a group of three urban communities that now live and grow together: Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, and Puerto Iguazu, Argentina.

The term "quad cities" refers to a grouping of four towns similar to that of twin citiestri-cities. Perhaps the most famous of these are the towns of Davenport, Iowa, Bettendorf, Iowa, Rock Island, Illinois, and Moline, Illinois, in the United States. East Moline, Illinois was later added to the group, and the "quad cities" term now refers to all five collectively. Of these, the Iowa and Illinois towns are separated by the Mississippi River.

The term for a collection of many cities into a single socioeconomic area is "megalopolis", or "metropolitan area".

Gotham City (the home of Batman) and Metropolis (the home of Superman) have sometimes been presented as twin cities, mainly in 1970s and 1980s stories by DC Comics. The two cities were shown as located on opposite sides of a large bay.

In the current i comics, Central City and Keystone City are shown as twin cities; earlier comics presented each city as located in the same space but on different parallel Earths.

In the i novels, Ankh-Morpork is referred to as "the twin cities of proud Ankh and pestilent Morpork", but has been a single political entity in all the books thus far.

In the animated television series i, the cities of Springfield and Shelbyville are twin cities with an intense rivalry between each other.