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They should harbor a joint history as cities that have existed as administrative units in the past,
prior to national borders separating them.
Although previously separated by borders, this delimiting should have been traded for open
borders.
A preferable case consists of cities where a river both separates and connects the cities facing
each other across the river (and, for this reason, they are called bridge towns).
There should be connecting factors and features conducive to cooperation such as ethnic
minorities as well as command of the neighbor‘s language.
There should be a certain level of institutionalization of cooperation between the twins in terms
of unified administrative structures and common urban planning. The most advanced twin
towns purport themselves as ―Euro-cities‖ in emphasizing their European rather than national
identity.
While agreeing with most of the above criteria, we nonetheless base our study on a somewhat
different and more extensive definition of twin towns with adjacency and the breaking of spatial
fixations in the form of national borders as our main point of departure. Whereas twinning is in
most cases seen as residing in the application of a particular form of ―urban logic,‖ it also inevitably
provides the cities engaged in such activities with transnational and international features. It does so
as they contribute, in varying degrees, to the formation of commonality reaching beyond national
configurations (Joenniemi and Sergunin, 2011; 2012).
Notably, twinning stands for shared citiness and figures as a manifestation of new forms of urban
policies. It testifies, as an aspect of regionalization, with considerable clarity that the order-producing
impact of national borders is waning. The changing character of inner-oriented borders turning into
outwards-oriented frontiers and allowing for the emergence of shared borderland is visible also in
northern Europe as exemplified by twinning. City-twinning has turned into one of the departures
used by cities in aspiring for a distinct, visible, and favorable profile, and it is, in this sense, part and
parcel of their policies of place-marketing and branding in the context of the increasingly intense
and transnational regionalization.
Twinning has also accrued broader institutional forms with the establishment of the City Twins
Association (CTA) in December 2006. Altogether 14 cities have joined the CTA, including four
pairs located in northern Europe: Valka-Valga (Latvia–Estonia), Imatra-Svetogorsk (Finland-Russia),
Narva-Ivangorod (Estonia-Russia) and Tornio-Haparanda (Finland-Sweden) (City Twins
Association, 2010).
These pairs, coming into being during the 1980s or 1990s through initiatives taken by the cities
themselves, differ as to success and effectiveness. Tornio-Haparanda obviously stands out as a
success story and Valka-Valga as well as Imatra-Svetogorsk belong more or less to the same
category. Narva-Ivangorod has, in turn, experienced some initial difficulties in implementing various
schemes of twinning, although the record of this Estonian-Russian pair has to some extent
improved over time (Joenniemi and Sergunin, 2012).