How many is too many?
When we learned earlier this week that Chattanooga would be creating a partnership with its seventh sister city, we wondered if the city was an outlier for its size in having so many sister cities.
It turns out it’s not an outlier, but the list of cities our size or smaller with as many sister cities — according to an online listing — is not a long one.
Mobile, Alabama, which has a population virtually the same as Chattanooga’s 182,000 (2021), has 15 sister cities. Lowell, Massachusetts, with fewer than 115,000 residents, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, with just over 100,000 residents, each have 10. Santa Fe, New Mexico, with around 90,000 residents, also has 10. McAllen, Texas, with a population of around 145,000, boasts 12 sister cities. Tacoma, Washington, with just shy of 220,000, has 13.
Chattanooga’s newest sister city is Accra, the capital city of Ghana and its first sister city on the African continent.