Twin Cities

Twin cities

Twin cities are a special case of two neighboring cities or urban centers that grow into a single conurbation, or narrowly separated urban areas, over time. Twin cities are generally comparable in status and size, though not necessarily equal. Although there are no formal criteria, a city and a substantially smaller suburb would not typically qualify, even if they were once separate. Tri-cities and quad cities are similar groups of three or four municipalities, respectively.

Minneapolis–Saint Paul

Minneapolis–Saint Paul is a major metropolitan area built around the confluence of the Mississippi, Minnesota, and St. Croix rivers in east central Minnesota. The area is commonly known as the Twin Cities after its two largest cities, Minneapolis, the state's most populous city, and its neighbor to the east, Saint Paul, the capital. Minnesotans often refer to the two together as "the Cities." It is the third-largest metropolitan area in the Midwest and the 16th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the U.S.

Twin

Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy. Twins can be either monozygotic ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two embryos, or dizygotic, meaning that each twin develops from a separate egg and each egg is fertilized by its own sperm cell. Since identical twins develop from one zygote, they will share the same chromosomal sex, while fraternal twins may or may not. In very rare cases, fraternal or (semi-) identical twins can have the same mother and different fathers.

City

A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agreed definition of the lower numerical boundary for their size. In a more specific sense, a city can be defined as a permanent and densely populated place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks. Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, production of goods, and communication. Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organizations, and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process, such as improving the efficiency of goods and service distribution.

Twin Cities

Proper noun

1. The metropolitan area of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota.