Twin Cities

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Twin Cities (allthetropes.org) There are many twin cities - Buda and Pest, El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Ottawa and Gatineau, and so on - but the one that most Americans think of when they hear the phrase “Twin Cities” is Minneapolis and St. Paul, the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Famous for the Mall of America (in one of the suburbs).

St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Minnesota’s Urban Origins (MNopedia) Only outsiders and strangers—and those who name baseball teams—would call St. Paul and Minneapolis “twins.” The rest of us call them “The Cities,” recognizing that though they sit right next to each other and on the same river, they pull in decidedly different directions.

The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people — people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from normal standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work. Some of the lodgers in our hotel lived lives that were curious beyond words. George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

Minneapolis–Saint Paul (Wikipedia) Minneapolis–Saint Paul is a metropolitan area in the Upper Midwestern United States centered around the confluence of the Mississippi, Minnesota and St. Croix rivers in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is commonly known as the Twin Cities after the area’s two largest cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Minnesotans often refer to the two together (or the seven-county metro area collectively) simply as “the cities”. The area is Minnesota’s economic, cultural, and political center.

Twin Cities (en.wikivoyage.org) The Twin Cities of Minnesota constitute the political, cultural, and economic capital of the Upper Midwest, and along with the Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit metropolitan areas, the core of the North Coast region of the United States.