May 03

Twin cities

When Marie and I were newlyweds, our first home was in Columbia, SC, near the university we both attended. A couple of years later, we moved across the river to West Columbia. The two cities were really just parts of a single metropolitan area, but it made sense for them to be different cities (with their own names and governments) because they were in different counties. The Broad River was the boundary.

But when I was a child, I lived in Monroe, LA, which was also part of a “twin cities” metropolitan area, with West Monroe on the other side of the Ouachita River. However, the river was not any kind of legal boundary; both cities were in the same parish. It was really just a single city with a river running through the middle. So why were Monroe and West Monroe separate cities (with different names and governments)? I’ve never understood this.

And my mother’s birthplace makes even less sense. She was born in Kansas City, MO, which is adjacent to Kansas City, KS. But not across the river! The Missouri River does run through the Kansas City metropolitan area, but it flows from west to east. The boundary is the state line between Kansas and Missouri, which runs north to south. So why do both cities have exactly the same name when they have to be different cities because they’re in different states?  And why are they both named after Kansas, when the one in Missouri has three times the population of the one in Kansas? It makes no sense.