TWINCITY

Most of us have heard of Twin Cities, that mechanism that enabled our high-school friends to visit foreign countries during the school year, and also provides municipal dignitaries short excursions abroad. The average city resident is unaware of what lies behind this pseudo-diplomatic international mechanism, nor in what fashion do cities benefit from it.

Twin City Contracts has gained popularity following the devastation of World War II, with Germany and France initiating the first city-to-city contacts already at the end of the 1940’s. In the 1950’s international city unions were established across Europe, the United States and Soviet Russia, which sought to promote city international relations. At its basis, Twin-City relations aspires to acquaint one urban community with another, in order to increase cultural understanding and reduce the potential for misunderstandings, which might lead to violence and war.

The logic behind this mechanism equates cities with civic populations who can disregard complex national interests for the sake of mundane human conduct, desires, aspirations and plain old curiosity. Since President Eisenhauer’s promoted such ‘Civic Diplomacy’, which he envisioned as a people-to-people rout of communication, Twin-City agreements has increased to engulf the entire globe with 11,618 settlements networking over 15,225 pairs of formal contracts (2014). Twin-City mechanism is an international platform for dialogue and peaceful human exchange.