Thursday, August 11, 2005

A million "sister city" relationships

This is just a thought.

Eugene, Oregon, the city I live in, has a sister city relation with a Russian city in Siberia: Irkutsk. But, why does Eugene have only relations with one Russian city? With the number of Russian scholars associted with the University of Oregon, and others with relatoins in Russia, why aren't there official relationships with all those cities defined by real interactions with them? This could keep the transnational municipal foreign-relations movement alive, and also strengthen ties in the local community. Why have just one sister city in Russia, or France, or Egypt, or Nicaragua? The point of transnationalism is to erase national boundaries, not reinforce them.

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