Chongqing, China, world's fastest growing city is Detroit's sister city?

[davewindsor]

I was checking out Wikipedia and noticed that Detroit has seven sister cities including Chongqing, China, the world's fastest growing city with over 28m people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit How did it come to be that the world's fastest growing city in China was sistered with one on decline? Detroit doesn't even have a Chinatown anymore. I couldn't find a thread on it here. Out of curiousity, does anyone have a background on how this partnership came to be, which Detroit mayor signed it into being, and how these two cities are so much alike that they became sisters?

I googled Sister Cities International and Wikipedia said the sister cities program was originated by President Eisenhower to develop partnerships between two cities and a "sister city .... becomes official with the signing of a formal agreement by the top elected officials of the two jurisdictions. This is usually done during a ceremony..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_..._International

[Gistok]

OK, this is from memory... Chongqing was once part of Sichuan [[Szechwan) province, the most populous of all Chinese provinces [[over 100 million). It was the provinces largest city, and later became [[like Beijing and Shanghai) an autonomous city-state, thus breaking away from Sichuan province. It wasn't just the city that broke away... but also the surrounding metro area and environs.

But to get back to the Detroit connections... IIRC Chongqing [[Chungking) was also China's auto producing capital... hence the sister city with Detroit.

One of the reasons for this city's fast growth is because it is surrounded with vast areas of densly populated Sichuan province, an agricultural area where many rural residents have left for the big city. Sichuan/Chongqing is in southwestern China [[near the 3 Gorges Dam).

[dtowncitylover]

I wish Detroit would do more to foster their relationship between the Sister Cities we have. Turin, Dubai, Chongqing, and Toyota, four of our Sister Cities, would be the best cities for such better partnerships.