Twin Cities: Territorial and Relational Geographies of ‘Worldly’ Manchester

Abstract

This paper contributes to recent interest in city twinning by urban theorists. It begins with a review of writing from across the social sciences which describes the institutional context and content of twinning programmes, as well as work which theorises how care and hospitality are key elements of twinning practices. Ethnographic research is then presented from the City of Manchester (UK) in order to consider the ways in which twinning is constituted through circuits, networks and webs of co-operation and competition involved in the transfer of policy and knowledge which can be strategic, uneven and at times ambivalent. In doing so, it is argued that the conflicts, tensions and contradictions bound up with twinning have much to offer theoretical and empirical understanding of territorial and relational urban politics. The paper concludes with theoretical, methodological and policy relevant insights.

Introduction

In seeking to advance understanding of city twinning, this paper discusses circuits, networks and webs of co-operation and competition through which urban policy and knowledge are constituted and are transferred from city to city via the work of public- and private-sector élites and community groups (Clarke, 2009a, 2009b; Grosspietsch, 2009; Jayne et al., 2011). Twinning is a widespread practice that has proliferated around the world with citizens usually made aware of international partnerships though civic visitation, educational exchanges and cultural co-operation. In the UK alone, 1399 cities, towns and villages have entered into 2535 twinning partnerships (in 90 countries around the world), which Clarke (2008a, 2008b) suggests represents an example of ‘globalisation of care’ which ‘produces proximities’ as part of urban ‘statecraft’ involved in a ‘new politics of scale’ and ‘localism’ and through the activities of ‘bottom–up’ social movements. In this paper, we highlight how attention to twinning can contribute to broader research agendas associated with uncovering ‘actually existing neo-liberalisation’ (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Peck, 2004) and more specifically interrogating the relational and territorial practices and processes bound up with urban knowledge and policy transfer (Ward, 2006; McCann, 2010; McCann and Ward, 2010).

In particular, we are interested in the extent to which twinning works to bind city networks (Leitner and Sheppard, 2002; Taylor, 2004; Massey, 2007) in order to enhance flows of global mobility through acts of reciprocity and exchange (Urry, 2007) and the ways in which twinning exists in (and through) cities via flows of knowledge and policy transfer which vary in terms of degrees of speed and intensity (Doel and Hubbard, 2002). Moreover, the fact that twinning involves exchanges of ideas, people, goods, food, products, art and so on reminds us of the need “to multiply the readings of the city” (Lefebvre, 1995, p. 159) and here we also examine how the heterogeneity of twinning practices can be seen contribute to geographical conceptualisations which stress the agency of cities (Massey, 2007; Amin and Thrift, 2004). However, alongside consideration of ‘relational’ urban theory, we are also interested in the ways in which twinning is differentially and discursively constructed through the territoriality of cities. For example, although supportive of relational thinking and its goals towards “an open-ended mobile, networked and actor centred geographic becoming” (Jones, 2009, p. 497), Jones also argues that there is a need to pay attention to how relationality is

constructed, anchored and mobilized in and through territorial defined political, socioeconomic and cultural strategies (Jones, 2009, p. 494).

Towards that end, we present ethnographic research from the City of Manchester (UK), including 16 in-depth interviews undertaken with local authority officers, councillors and community groups involved in Manchester’s twinning activities. Nine in-depth interviews were also undertaken with representatives from Manchester’s twin partner cities of Rehovot (Israel), Chemnitz (Germany), Cordoba (Spain), Faisalabad (Pakistan), Bilwi (Nicaragua), St Petersburg (Russia), Wuhan (China), Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and Osaka (Japan). All of these interviews were undertaken in English with city representatives who are fluent speakers experienced in conversing as part of their twinning work. The interviews were transcribed and subjected to systematic multistage qualitative analysis (Baxter and Eyles, 1997), including two levels of coding: ‘in vivo’ codes drawing on terms used by the respondents and ‘constructed’ codes developed by the researchers. The codes from interviewees’ accounts were compared in order to generate dominant and counter themes (Strauss, 1987). The quotes have been anonymised and are verbatim with any editing highlighted.

Urban Studies and Twinning

The relatively small amount of academic attention paid to twinning has focused on ceremonies and rituals (food, fetes, music), the promotion of trade and technical co-operation, effective communication and work cultures, and interpersonal relations as key elements of successful twinning (see for example, Ewen and Hebbert, 2007; Saunier and Ewen, 2008; Cremer et al., 2001; Furmankiewicz, 2007; Baldersheim, 2002; Vion, 2002, 2007; Papagarufali, 2005). Others have considered geographies and histories of twinning, including the political and economic drivers of twinning as well as seeking to unravel the nature of social and cultural networks created by government bodies, social and citizens groups (Clarke, 2009a, 2009b; Grosspietsch, 2009; Jayne et al., 2011). However, the author that undoubtedly best characterises both the limitations and potentialities of the majority of research into city twinning is Wilbur Zelinsky who argued that the study of twinning offers vital insights into the “transnationalization of society and culture” and who describes twinning as a potential “entering wedge” to allow theorists to begin to unpack “the vast subject of globalising society” (Zelinsky, 1991, p. 2).

In seeking to capture the complexity of twinning Zelinsky (1991, p. 4) stresses that “genuine reciprocity of effort and benefit, with neither community profiting at the expense of the other” is a key tenet of twinning, adding that many city-to-city or citizen-to-citizen relationships are underpinned by ideological connections and/or humanitarian programmes which are often at odds with official supranational, national or city political agendas and policies. In focusing on a ‘transnationalisation of society and culture’ Zelinsky (1991) thus offers a tantalising glimpse of the way in which studying city twinning can contribute to the advancement of urban theory. Questions asked by Zelinsky include: what sorts of people are involved in twinning, to what extent and in what ways? Who is not involved and why? What are the measurable economic and political results of twinning in the short and long term? What is the impact of twinning on the community and individuals? How have attitudes and perceptions changed because of twinning activities? How has consciousness of distant people and places been raised? How does twinning compare with other movements/connections—tourism, church missions, religious pilgrimages, trade fairs, labour migration, telecommunications, college students’ movements, commercial dealings, non-government organisations and other networks? Unfortunately, however, the majority of research questions asked by Zelinsky have been left unanswered. Indeed, the empirically focused approach of Zelinsky ultimately set a precedent where researchers continually point to the importance of the topic, offering rich and detailed case study material from around the world but ultimately fail to make a case for just what theoretical work it is that studying city twinning achieves (Cremer et al., 2001; Baldersheim, 2002; Vion, 2002; Jain, 2004; Ewen and Hebbert, 2007; Saunier and Ewen, 2008; Furmankiewicz, 2007).

In contrast, Nick Clarke (2008a, 2008b, 2009a, 2009b) has developed a critical account showing how, in the UK since 1945, twinning must be understood as part of ‘new localism’ and a ‘new politics of scale’ bound up with the emergence of neo-liberal governance. Clarke (2009a) locates twinning activities as trans-sovereign politics associated with ‘urban entrepreneurialism’, related to shifts from government to governance bound up with capitalist restructuring—both upwards to the supranational scale and downwards to the regional, urban and local scales. Clarke argues that twinning must be theorised as an outcome of state-spatial restructuring and points to issues such as ‘municipal foreign policy’, ‘community development’ and ‘local government restructuring’ as examples of how twinning has now become indicative of contemporary urban ‘fast policy’, interurban networking as well as a marginalisation of ‘bottom–up’ localism that has historically been a key feature of twinning programmes.

Following Zelinsky, Clarke (2009b) highlights that twinning has been used to extend care across space, emphasising moral motivations and a spirit of equality and reciprocity as a means to forge political community across national boundaries. However, arguing that twinning appears to be changing in character Clark (2009b, p. 12) suggests that attempts to globalise care through twinning have been negatively affected by contemporary neo-liberal policy agendas. The popularity of tightly focused projects, the clear benefit of which must be demonstrated via the institutionalisation of monitoring, evaluation and auditing have, according to Clarke, permeated twinning partnerships with performance being measured against targets at regular intervals. Clarke suggests then that it is ‘care-in-a-hurry’ which now dominates public- and private-sector élite involvement in capturing the economic benefits of twinning.

Clarke’s work is important in that it discusses twinning in terms of broader theoretical debates relating to networks and connections, changing modes of urban governance, institutional thickness, regime theory, ‘neo-liberalisation’ and ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ strategies of capital accumulation (Amin and Thrift, 1995; Horan and Jonas, 1998; Geddes, 2005). However, while Clarke’s work undoubtedly represents an important advance in theoretical engagement with twinning, Jayne et al. (2010) suggest that, in drawing on regulation and state theory, Clarke’s structural political economy approach does not fully allow theoretical understanding of the complexity of political, economic, social, cultural and spatial practices and processes which constitutes city twinning. For example, Clarke’s argument fails to acknowledge that twinning is not subject to the formal monitoring and evaluation associated with contemporary urban governance, but that success is ‘performed’ through rituals of ‘hospitality’. In this paper, therefore, we emphasise intimate moments of hospitality that are relied on to facilitate particular political and economic (although often unmeasurable) returns by affecting long-term and ‘at a distance’ outcomes which capitalise on the ‘special relationships’ between twinning partners. In doing so, we show that what Clarke (2009a) describes as ‘bottom–up localism’ characterising twinning via humanitarian and political solidarity (based on notions of relational unbounded progressive relations and connectivity) has always been constrained and structured by national and local agendas and policy.

Twinning, Entrepreneurial Urbanism and Territorial/Relational Cities: Manchester as a Worldly City

In the remainder of this paper, we work at the intersection of debates about city twinning and wider discussion about relational and territorial urbanism. By focusing on the transfer of urban knowledge and policy bound up with the City of Manchester’s (UK) twinning activities, we draw on Cook and Ward’s (2011) critical review of Manchester’s Olympic and Commonwealth Games bids which emerges from a longer tradition of theoretical engagement with urban policy and knowledge transfer (see for example, Harvey, 1989; Cochrane et al., 1996; Cox and Mair, 1988; Stone, 2004; Peck and Theodore, 2002; McCann, 2010). In order to reveal the underlying motivations and expectations of public- and private-sector élites who visit (and are visited by representatives of) other cities in order to amass knowledge and policy inspiration, Cook and Ward (2011, p. 2519) call for researchers to take seriously “the circuits, networks and webs in and through which urban knowledge and learning are constituted and moved around” and highlight the importance of rethinking ‘territoriality vis-à-vis relationality’ in order to understand how

cities as territories are constantly being assembled, disassembled and reassembled … [through] fixity in motion … [and the ways in which] cities are parts of circuits, networks and webs in and through which they compare and learn (Cook and Ward, 2011, p. 2531).

Building on previous work focused on the City of Manchester as a UK exemplar of the movement from ‘municipal socialism’ to ‘new urban politics’, Cook and Ward focus on the city’s

position in trans-urban networks of learning and how these informed the Games projects and the development of the city more generally (Cook and Ward, 2011, p. 2520; also see Peck and Ward, 2002; Randell, 1995; Quilley, 1999).

Comparing Cook and Ward’s findings with our own research into Manchester’s twinning partnerships highlights a number of important key similarities as well as significant points of departure that, when read together, help to illuminate the contested and complicated nature of territorial and relational urban politics.

Before engaging in this dialogue it is important to note that public-sector actors from Manchester City Council and other partner organisations were well rehearsed in their responses during interviews—the City does not have ‘twinning’ or ‘twin city’ relationships, but instead enters into ‘friendship agreements’. As discussed by Jayne et al. (2011), the motivation behind the choice of this labelling can clearly be seen to be bound up with a concern to avoid historical associations of twinning dominated by civic and symbolic activities and associated public and popular (territorial) concerns over ‘junketing’ in contrast to the acknowledgement of the (relational) entrepreneurial benefits of making connections with the rest of the world. Moreover, of Manchester’s nine ‘friendship agreements’, only four were deemed by public- and private-sector respondents to be ‘active’—Wuhan, St Petersburg, Chemnitz and Cordoba—with the latter two being characterised as of minor importance. In contrast, community and other social groups maintained active programmes and activities (although to varying degrees) with seven cities—Wuhan, St Petersburg, Chemnitz, Cordoba, Rehovot, Faisalabad and Bilwi—sometimes as part of ‘official’ programmes but more often than not working outside the formal public- and private-sector engagement with those cities. With this important point of definition in mind, in the remainder of the paper we introduce empirical research which seeks to explain a number of interconnected stories bound up with territorial and relational urbanism which relate to the conflicts, tensions and contradictions underpinning Manchester’s strategic, uneven and at times ambivalent engagement in co-operative and competitive ‘friendship agreements’.

When is a Junket Not a Junket? Strategic, Uneven and Ambivalent City Twinning

First then, research into Manchester’s ‘twinning’ relationships highlights the importance of ‘fact-finding trips’ and ‘visits’ as part of the scheduled programme of active friendships agreements. Cook and Ward (2011) suggest, however, that despite being “a common feature of contemporary urban governance, relatively little is known about the role they have played in … the shift towards entrepreneurial urbanism” (p. 2523), showing how, for Manchester’s Olympic and Commonwealth Games bids,

the primary focus for ‘globetrotting’ trips was to lobby rather than to learn … [and that trips] confirmed … rather than taught (Cook and Ward, 2011, p. 2525 and p. 2527).

Such findings ring true in our research on twinning, with both public- and private-sector élite actors also suggesting that, while it is important to see, of more importance is to be seen

So on the one hand I think they learned more from us than perhaps we learned from them but on the other hand it was a two-way relationship, because we saw some of the very innovative regeneration programmes that they were running but they really kept us on our toes … you know, talking to them … I mean the main thing is, is that, you know, Manchester has got ‘about’ in the positive sense … not just symbolic, but being there, and being seen to have weight. So when we do interact, particularly with the two strongest cities [Wuhan and St Petersburg] … What we are saying is taken very seriously (senior Manchester City Council officer).

In contrast, Manchester’s twinning partners were much happier to point to just what it was they had learned from visiting the city

I would like to mention the Manchester experience in strategic planning and the vision of Manchester city’s development. For example, Manchester has succeeded very well and in the promotion of creative industries and how to apply them to the life of the city, to the wellbeing of its population … We have seen that it depends on several reasons, of course, business heads and skills that can correspond with the interests of the private companies (local authority representative, St Petersburg).

The research findings also emphasise how public- and private-sector actors focus on the development of face-to-face personal relationships amongst ‘movers and shakers’ (Peck, 1995)—interactions seen as vital to facilitating access to ‘difficult to reach’ circuits, networks and webs of co-operation

The Chamber of Commerce will take companies over to trade with China, we haven’t successfully got any of them to invest in Wuhan yet. But we’ve managed to get some of the Wuhan companies to set up here in the Manchester Science Park … Having said that, the civic thing is vitally important to Chinese relationships … They love their leaders and they love their mayors. And, and one thing that is very valuable to us in Manchester is to have succeeded in persuading the Chinese to locate a Consul General here … Mr Gong, he can open doors for us back in China as well and give us endorsement. So when we went over two years ago, to Beijing initially and then on to Wuhan … which we timed to coincide with the Man United tour, when they did China and Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo, Mr Gong was able to get Richard Leese [the then Leader of the City Council] an audience with the Mayor of Beijing … and also the Head of the Olympics Committee, which wasn’t an easy meeting to get. And that, you know, was very effective for us, it raised our profile … One of Mr Gong’s assistants said ‘I saw you on Beijing TV’ … And that sort of relationship is, is really important, it opens doors for you. And, and that’s not always the case you know, it’s hard work when you’re out there, you know, it’s meeting upon meeting, and receptions and you get a lot out of it absolutely because you put a lot into it (Manchester Economic Development Agency representative).

Throughout such interviews with public- and private-sector élites, the ‘connectivity’ that Manchester sought to develop was shown to be constituted by key institutions, organisations and individual actors including local universities, football teams, representatives of the airport, hotels and tourist board, large and small to medium-sized businesses, city-wide and international development agencies and specific councillors and officers. The concern with connection and exchange was, significantly, also seen as the most important way in which Manchester’s friendship agreements have the ability to create ‘work’ through accessing ‘new’ global markets (Taylor, 2004). Indeed, one feature of each trip abroad was that the constitution of delegations was tailored to the aims of the specific visit and host city. For example, on a trip to St Petersburg, local authority officers and councillors were joined by the Manchester Creative Industries Development Service, a number of high-profile academics and a range of ‘cool’ creative businesses and cultural organisations (see Mellor, 1997). Analysing the ways in which twinning delegations are populated by different individuals, groups and organisations shows that there is much to be gained from unpacking the mundane material and discursive practices of the circulation of ‘good practice’ and ‘ideas’ in order to highlight how comparison, expertise, learning and policy movement unfold (or, indeed, failed to manifest).

Cook and Ward (2011) also importantly highlight how knowledge and policy transfer does not involve a single, linear and literal movement from one place to another. Indeed, our research found that Manchester’s friendship with Wuhan was less important in its own right that the connections that the partnership facilitated with Beijing, Shanghai and the Chinese national government. Thus, while one local authority officer acknowledged in hindsight that if Manchester were currently entering into a friendship agreement with a Chinese city, they would prefer a formal agreement with the better-known, larger and more economically successful city of Shanghai, nonetheless the friendship agreement with Wuhan had led to greater connections and possibilities to access Chinese markets

Because of Chinese culture and politics because it’s a one-party state, because of what they call their private-sector companies are still state owned … If you don’t have the support of the government and by that, I mean not only national but local government in China, you’re not going to be as successful, so it is actually, the relationship between Manchester City Council and Wuhan Council, Municipal Council that allows us to have status … That’s what we’ve now got when we actually go in there and even in the cities where there’s not a city relationship, like Shanghai for example, where we went last year and did a big seminar because we got support from the Shanghai Municipal Government, it was that much easier to get into the infrastructure, so in China in particular it’s very important to have that specific and political relationship … China is a long-term prospect and that is purely because of that friendship agreement, we wouldn’t have got into China if it hadn’t been for that (senior Manchester City Council officer).

Myself, and three others from the Council went out at what seemed like a moment’s notice, last July because Man City were playing out in Shanghai and what we had time to do there was corporate hospitality … so we invited people to come and watch the game with us and invited intermediaries or companies that we’d already got in touch with, through the local vice mayor who was on the Board of Governors of the local university … We invited him to our box for the match but of course he was so important he had his own box. So we were invited to his box. As a result of that we got the relationship with the vice mayor so that Richard Leese was invited to a private lunch (Manchester Economic Development Agency representative).

Cook and Ward (2011) also highlight how Manchester’s Olympic and Commonwealth Games bids were developed not only through mobile learning, by visiting other cities and meeting ‘experts’, but that such visits were used in conjunction with the commissioning of ‘fact finding’ and ‘best practice’ consultancy reports and attendance at conferences and seminars. This ‘raft’ of activities involved in knowledge and policy transfer similarly underpinned the evaluation of Manchester’s friendship agreements during the shift from ‘municipal socialism’ during the late 1980s and early 1990s which led to the rationalisation of the city’s friendship agreements and the emergence or consolidation of other trans-urban networks and connections. For example, following a review of its friendship agreements in 1990 as part of a broader consideration of the efficacy of the city’s international activities, Manchester City Council embarked on sustained involvement in a growing number of national and international networks, including the English Core Cities, Eurocities, Digital cities and so on (see Manchester City Council, 1990; Lever and Vaughan, 2003).¹ As the following quote shows, facilitating “multiple points of comparison and multiple trans-urban networks of learning, both of which are constitutive of forms of contemporary governance” (Cook and Ward, 2011, p. 2531), was a clear priority for the city council at this time

So, to cut a long story short, I was asked in 1990 to do a review of the economic impact of international relationships and we came up with two things. One that Manchester should join the Eurocities organisation which we did in ’92 and secondly, in order to make the biggest impact on Eurocities to develop a three-way partnership between us, Cordoba and Chemnitz beyond the Eurocities network so that we could kind of get us involved in those European programmes which did apply directly to us … and that three-way relationship being the starting-point, from the twinning, the friendship relationships, but that this should become primarily about economic development and training and best practice … so it was a complete shake-up of our whole attitude and then gradually during the 1990s I took over the responsibility of the European funding and economic development. I just took ourselves off to Brussels for a week and we just went round every single office saying we’re Manchester, we know we haven’t done much in the past, we intend to change that, tell us about Europe … Euro Cities and the rest is history and from there … I think the idea of twinning is a bit old-fashioned in terms of the things you want to achieve out of those relationships, so I think definitely we tried to move away from, sort of … visits and hand-shaking … so if you look at local authorities and the districts that have that sort of twinning, they don’t really have the depth of the sort of international activities that places like Manchester does but I think we don’t need to make it into something bigger than it actually is. I guess it was sort of a new style, we’ve got an agreement that is with Wuhan, it’s been going for what, three, two and a half years, something like that. There’s sort of basis of one with St Petersburg, and that’s it at the moment (former Manchester City Council officer).

Such (re-)evaluation of Manchester’s trans-urban relationships led to both new engagements with networks and cities and a re-articulation of the importance of Manchester’s ‘active’ friendship agreements with Wuhan and St Petersburg.

While in these terms Manchester’s friendship agreements and the involvement of public- and private-sector élites can, at best, be described as strategic or on the other hand as uneven or ambivalent, one of the side-effects of Manchester’s involvement in a proliferating number of networks at this time was the emergence of what one local authority officer described as a influx of “regeneration tourists”. The officer lamented that large numbers of delegations from cities around the world regularly contacted city council officials wishing to undertake ‘fact-finding tours’ or ‘study visits’ to the city, as well as numerous requests for new friendship agreements. As the following quote shows

Manchester is a famous city … Manchester football teams, I guess that helps, but Manchester is a very popular destination … the amount of change that has taken place in the city in the last decade or so is very interesting and attractive to cities from everywhere who want to come and see how we’ve done it. So I guess for them they’ve got the same sort of desire to promote trade. The importance of Manchester for them is a case study and large scale regeneration. We get, we get far more requests now than ever before … for them to come here and to see what we have done … more than we can accommodate (Manchester City Council officer).

However, what becomes clear from the interviews is that Manchester’s changing engagement with international city-to-city relationships was based upon ‘worldly’ knowledge and/or perceptions which sought to locate the city at a place in an urban hierarchy to exploit policy and knowledge transfer. Hence, the strategy of the city council to focus on just two active friendship agreements and to pursue involvement in networks such as the English Core Cities, Eurocities and other ad hoc relationships that the city council has sought to develop (with cities such as New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Los Angeles and Shanghai), highlights how Manchester sought to target and work with cities which are believed to be ‘comparable’ whether in size or reputation or are part of ‘exploitable’ circuits, networks and webs of co-operation to which the city wants to gain access. In these terms, the city council sought to make informed ‘worldly’ choices about what can be learned from cities, judged to be equally or ‘more successful’ than Manchester. In contrast, as the following quotes show, cities such as Cordoba and Chemnitz, the other non-active ‘twinned cities’, those cities which send regeneration tourists and those who request new friendship agreements are thus deemed to be cities that can learn from Manchester but not that Manchester can learn from such cities

Some very big challenges in regeneration … and one of the things that Chemnitz are interested now is look at is the concept of social enterprise and co-operative movement can be extended with Chemnitz to help regenerate the city involved in … given that Manchester has expertise in this area … they’re very keen to work with Manchester on … extend the … exchange … project over two years (Manchester City Council officer).

With Shanghai, New York and Los Angeles, we are getting very practical relationships politically and that are doing the job for us. What we don’t need is … formal agreement such as friendship agreements with any Tom, Dick or Harry. We are also looking at relationships with Melbourne and Sydney in Australia. Melbourne has a very similar economic profile to Manchester (senior Manchester City councillor).

However, while such quotes clearly show how Clarke’s (2009a, 2009b) concern of care-in-a-hurry had indeed begun to dominate Manchester’s engagement in ‘new’ urban partnerships, what is also clear from our research findings is that there is also an explicit acknowledgement by both public- and private-sector élites that the kind of reciprocity of effort and benefit, constituted through mutual understanding, friendship and activities that Zelinsky described as constituting ‘old-style’ twinning, has become ever more important to ‘new urban politics’

I suppose by the nature of the thing that you do are very different in terms of institutions and structure of the cultures of St Petersburg and Wuhan … in the first place but actually makes it a little less straightforward but then maybe try to think … the structures where there is a more similar sort of ownership. The other thing I meant to say at the beginning is that, that there are, you know, the reason we’re doing this isn’t just for the Council, actually I see this as like a wide network of … you know, we have very strong relationships with the city that we try to sort of … together really, everything from football clubs to universities, large and small businesses … these organisations and the networks we have are needed to add weight to our visits but we were absolutely clear that we would need 10 years of ‘getting to know each other’ … together as people because that’s what the Chinese and Russian people like, they like to be able to trust you and know that you mean business (senior Manchester City Council officer).

In these terms, respondents acknowledge that ‘care-in-a-hurry’ has limitations and that they have had to develop understanding, account for and approach specific political, economic, social and cultural geographies at the heart of trans-urban relationships in different ways. The focus of Manchester’s friendship agreements in pursuing the (territorial) goals of economic development and wishing to avoid political and popular controversies over ‘junkets’ is thus clearly taking place in parallel with what private- and public-sector élites confirm to be a re-articulation of (relational) reciprocity expressed through hospitality. The careful balancing of territorial and relational urban politics in order to enter certain ‘markets’ is thus demanding the very sets of activities and events from which the city council (publically at least) wish to distance themselves. This uncomfortable contradiction of ‘new urban politics’ of targeted involvement in networks, circuits and webs of policy and knowledge transfer involved in the active friendship agreements was a clear issue of concern for the city authorities.

For example, while Manchester City Council has sought to distance itself from ‘civic’ and symbolic elements of twinning in favour of a more focused economic rationale, it was acknowledged that twin city events continue to be based upon hospitality underpinned by assemblages of human and non-human actors (McCann and Ward, 2011). These included football boxes, official civic receptions, dinners and private lunches, the signing of documents, the naming of streets, the planting of trees and the unveiling of plaques, as well as mutual exchanges of ‘performances’ by acrobats, professional and community theatre, children’s groups and other cultural and community organisations as key elements necessary to facilitate the pursuit of knowledge and policy transfer

We wanted to develop a more economically focused activity but I think in addition to that we also have a very big dilemma in terms of the Chinese and Russians … I think it’s been an interesting activity, has been about exploiting and highlighting links around education in particular … we’ve got 16 or so young people going out to Manchester schools, and Manchester children going to Wuhan and Shanghai … and we’ve had acrobats in China coming here … so there are some activities that we manage to focus on without going overboard (Manchester City Council officer).

Football but also most of them, people know that Manchester is industrial city of Great Britain and many of them know that Manchester is twin city, St Petersburg. Manchester come … from Manchester come to our city and also have Manchester Street in St Petersburg … And you know in our, one of, in one of our parks there is an alley, alley of twin cities. And there is, there are many stones with names of twin cities with St Petersburg with years and with trees planted in those years by delegations which came … and Manchester also, they remember Manchester also, it’s presented on this alley of twin cities with St Petersburg. In … but they are, in Russian, the … Victory Park (local authority representative, St Petersburg).

As these quotes show, the hospitality which represents the ‘success’ of friendship agreements continues to be constituted and represented through actors, activities, rituals and ceremonies through the “translation amongst incommensurate networks, division of labour among human and non-human actors, and place based constellations of distanciated practices” (Doel and Hubbard, 2002, p. 361) rather than unmeasurable economic and political outputs of friendship agreements judged through formal auditing, monitoring and evaluation.

Territorial and Relational Geographies of Co-operation and Competition

A second and overlapping theme to emerge from our research is that contradictions relating to the territorial and relational pressures of the co-operative and competitive nature of city twinning were bound up with involvement in the transfer of policy and knowledge and what has argued to be a marginalisation of ‘bottom–up’ localism in official twinning programmes. On the one hand, Clarke’s (2009a, 2009b) depiction of ‘care-in-a-hurry’ as a neo-liberal response to the formulation of ‘new urban politics’ can clearly be seen to have been a consequence of Manchester City Council’s involvement in increasing numbers of networks (alongside a lack of involvement in ‘less active’ and non-active friendship agreements) and through the emergence of ‘statecraft’ which does not deem all ‘bottom–up’ localism and community relationships as important to official programmes of twinning. This was particularly true in terms of what, at times, was the deliberate exclusion or marginalisation of social and community groups from active friendship city events. Indeed, a leader of a youth community organisation—whose offer for the children from their group, who had annually travelled to the friendship city and facilitated successful educational exchanges, to meet the visiting mayor was rejected by city council officers—suggested that “I don’t know what they thought our 8–10-year-olds would say to the visiting mayor, but they thought somehow we might embarrass the city and ruin the visit”.

In contrast, however, those elected councillors that were interviewed (unlike city council officers) who had often been involved in the setting up of friendship agreements or had been involved in reciprocal visits over decades highlighted a very different relational view of the co-operative and competitive nature of city twinning. In particular, councillors pointed to their own active participation in both official and non-official relationships facilitated by involvement with a greater diversity of networks, circuits and webs of knowledge than those deemed to be of strategic importance by council officers and other public- and private-sector élites. Councillors pointed to their ability actively to facilitate and maintain links with a wider variety of groups, organisations and individuals from partner cities than specifically assigned as part of their official duties as twinning delegates. Cultural associations, trade unions, formal and informal neighbourhood groups, business-to-business connections and friendships with individual actors were all highlighted as being a valued and productive part of friendship agreements through ‘non-official’ routes. Indeed, several councillors continue to draw on contacts developed over time with active groups who worked beyond local-authority-sanctioned activities in both active and inactive friendship cities, in regular and ad hoc ways. Such relationships ensured up-to-date understanding of the success and failure of urban development strategies undertaken elsewhere and thus ensured that they gained knowledge and policy insights from their involvement in “city networks in a multiplicity of cities” (Doel and Hubbard, 2002, p. 364).

While Clarke (2009a) is thus right to suggest that bottom–up localism is often marginalised, our evidence shows that, while certain artistic, social and community groups are being excluded from official twinning programmes, others retain a high visibility at twinning events in order to represent ‘official’ expressions of hospitality and friendship. However, beyond those institutions, organisations and individuals sanctioned by the city council to ‘reach out’ beyond the boundaries of the city through involvement in official twin city partnerships, the continuation of ‘non-official’ twinning relationships remains dependent on personal relationships or ad hoc activities that nonetheless ensure Manchester’s continued successful engagement and co-operation with ‘official’ activities in meaningful ways.

A further important issue that arises in regard to the territoriality and relationalites of Manchester’s friendship agreements emerges from a lack of reflexivity by public- and private-sector élites about the contradictions and tensions bound up with both the co-operative and competitive nature of city twinning. What was surprising during the interviews was that, while respondents rationalised the reasons and motivations for Manchester’s international relationships, there was very little reflection upon how the strategic and tailored approach was judged by their partners in the context of their own multiple twin city partnerships and “distanciated social relations” (Doel and Hubbard, 2002, p. 354). For example, during interviews with representatives of Manchester’s friendship cities, the view that while Manchester was a good ‘friend’ often emerged, but there was also an acknowledgement that other twinning partners took the relationship more seriously and applied more effort in maintaining the ‘friendship’

Milan, Corsica, Shanghai, Helsinki, yes, then in France, Bordeaux … I think I already mentioned the Baltic States. … Maybe in this aspect … geographical reasons play some role, [as] our nearest neighbours … are the most active … in promoting all its possibilities, all its achievements and showing us in St Petersburg this year. Shanghai are doing their best also, you know, in this year. But with Manchester I think we have all possibilities, all reasons to intensify, but other relations are stronger (local authority representative, St Petersburg).

Such sentiment was repeated throughout interviews with representatives of Manchester’s friendship cities. Thus, while Manchester’s public- and private-sector élites believed that they are successfully balancing the (territorial) demands of economically focused relationships with the (relational) benefits of knowledge and policy exchange, they were unaware that their efforts are subject to the same sets of criteria, not only judged by their own friendships partners but by the twin cities of those partners. In these terms, Manchester’s strategic choices around strategic, uneven and ambivalent investment in international partnerships expressed through programmes of twinning events were seen, even by its active friendships city representatives, as being relatively less potent in terms of measures of co-operation and hence competitiveness, and thus less important than their other partner cities.

Thus, while Manchester’s friendship agreements clearly highlight how “those involved in the making of ‘local’ policy often do so in a self-consciously comparative and relational manner” (Cook and Ward, 2011, p. 2522) our research shows that public- and private-sector élites were less aware that their efforts and activities were similarly judged and subject to the same relational and territorial strategies of both Manchester’s friendship cities and their twin city partners around the world. In these terms, while Manchester does indeed have an international reputation for the successful regeneration of the city, and its football teams and creative industries attract regeneration tourists and invitations for new twinning agreements, the city’s approach to friendship agreements and other interurban networks is being judged less favourably than other cities in an urban hierarchy characterised by intense competition. However, just as with the outcomes of twinning partnerships themselves, it is perhaps difficult to judge the differential impact and effects of this approach through measurable outputs, although what was clear nonetheless from the interviews was that other cities are being judged as more ‘careful’, more hospitable and thus more successful than Manchester at maintaining friendship/twinning relationships and thus balancing the conflicts and tensions that circulate around territorial/relational trans-urban networking. Thus, while these findings reinforce notions of the ways in which “urban networks produce markedly different regional variations in concentration” (Doel and Hubbard, 2002, p. 356), our research into Manchester’s friendship agreements works against the view of self-reflexive urban policy that is multiscalar, process-orientated and context-sensitive.

Conclusion

This paper has shown that Manchester’s approach to trans-urban exchanges has been to adopt strategic approaches to friendship agreements based on a ‘worldly’ evaluation of the entrepreneurial benefits of twinning relationships in contrast to other ‘less formal’ city-to-city connections. What emerges from our study is that, while the City of Manchester’s engagement in urban policy networks has proliferated, leading to relationships that can be characterised by ‘care-in-a-hurry’, there has also been a parallel re-articulation of ‘traditional’ values of hospitality and reciprocity associated with the early motivations of twin city partnerships. In terms of Manchester’s active friendship agreements, it is not audits of measurable outcomes which determine success, but rather it is hospitality and interactions between human and non-human actors—previously negatively associated with ‘junkets’—which remain central to strategies to enhance the city’s international profile of co-operation and competitiveness. In these terms, ‘twinning’ is clearly not a fading legacy of post-war co-operation and reconciliation that has been marginalised by ‘new urban politics’, but is an example of contemporary ‘care-in-not-so-much-of-a-hurry’.

Such analysis also signposts a number of ways in which interest in city twinning has much to contribute to understanding of the ways in which political-economic transformations are “embodied in, mediated by and productive of widely varied political, cultural and economic geographies” (Spark, 2006, p. 3). For example, evidence from our research shows that, in seeking to balance the territorial demands of economic development with the relational demands of specific twinning partners, there is clearly a lack of awareness that the strategic choices made by Manchester City Council are themselves being judged (often unfavourably) in relational/strategic terms by cities (and a diverse range of organisations, institutions and actors) connected to Manchester directly or indirectly through its twinning activities. Our research thus exposes how policy and knowledge exchange are shaped by variable socialities (Amin and Thrift, 2004; Gibson and Kong, 2005) and furthermore that the ‘worldly’ choices which underpin city twinning offer important theoretical and empirical insights into the ways in which

existing political/policy contexts … [are underpinned by] differential social power relations [and] notions of territory (Jones 2009, p. 488).

Footnotes

Notes

Funding Statement

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

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