ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with reviewing academic literature on the twin-cities theme to pinpoint some criteria of town-twinning, and then discusses Imatra–Svetogorsk fieldwork results. It focuses on residents’ awareness and evaluation of the twin-city agreements and the diverse cross-border cooperation (CBC) initiatives, alongside the impacts on everyday life in the two communities. To understand residents’ perspectives on town-twinning, the chapter proposes a citizen-perception continuum model as an analytical tool. The model enables residents' survey and expert interviews to be synthesised and weighted. It also closely connects to residents' perceptions, thereby representing a bottom-up approach to assessing twinning. Filling in remarks from survey and interview respondents allows assessment of the degree of maturity of particular twinning examples. CBC projects can potentially strengthen awareness of twinning between the communities, while internalising the idea of the twin-town project makes engagement in CBC projects seem more natural and interesting for the actors on both sides.
