Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
i'd say the cleveland/akron relationship is a lot closer to dallas/forth worth than it is to minneapolis/st.paul.
more than any other large paired US cities, minneapolis/st. paul most fully embody the "twin city" dynamic. neither one is a ring or satellite city for the other. they function much more as equalish dual nodes of one single continuous city.
for starters, they directly abut each other, sharing a 6 mile long municipal border.
their populations are fairly close; minneapolis 429K vs. st. paul 308K.
they were both incorporated very close in time. minneapolis 1867 vs. st. paul 1854.
the two downtown are only 8.5 miles apart, connected by an intra-city light rail line, not commuter rail.
they split major league sports. MLB, NFL, & NBA are in minneapolis. NHL & MLS are in st. paul. (notice how all the major sports teams are named "minnesota", never one city over the other).
the main art museums and convention center are in minneapolis, the main science and history museums are in st. paul.
minneapolis has the univeristy of minnesoata, st. paul is minnesota's st. capital.
and on and on.
they really do function more like one single city with two major downtown nodes than any other large US city pair that i can think of.
|
Yeah, I totally agree with this. I have visited the twin cities a handful of times and found exactly you’re describing... functioning in many ways as a single city. My cousin, a Minneapolis native, refers to St. Paul as the “rougher twin brother” of the two. So close together and fully integrated, that traveling between the two just feels like going to a different neighborhood within the same city.
That’s definitely not the case with Dallas and Fort Worth, which like Cleveland and Akron, are connected by newer sprawl (DFW on a much greater level obviously), but still are 30+ miles from each other and maintain much more distinct individual identities and attributes and institutions. DFW really grew together rapidly, whereas it seems Cleveland expanded to include Akron within its orbit.
Whether or not Ft. Worth has become a ring city of Dallas is debatable, I guess, based on what parameters one wants to consider. I can see how it could be, but at the same time with nearly 1M in population in the city and over 2M with its bordering suburban counties (Parker, Wise, 1/2 of Denton)Fort Worth is a large American city in its own right. Akron, on the other hand, seems to have become part of “Greater Cleveland” via urban decline-induced suburban sprawl... and since you can’t sprawl into the lake, Cleveland’s sprawl fully encompassed locales to the east and west on the lakeshore and pushed south to connect and pull in the Akron area in the 1980s to present day.