Twin cities? Posadas, Argentina and Encarnacion, Paraguay from a socio-urban perspective

The objective of this article is to demostrate the mechanisms of complementary relationships maintained by the border cities of Posadas, Argentina and Encarnacion, Paraguay. From a descriptive and diachronic approach the study argues that these cities can be interpreted as twin cities, which share a cultural and historical matrix in the regional context. Both cities apart from their specificities, present similar socio-urban aspects, and in their evolution they were involved in the same processes and problems: border flows, Mercosur policies, construction of the international bridge, Border Neighborhood Traffic Agreements, even a more unusual phenomenon, such as the effect that large infrastructure works have left on their territories. It is concluded that these cities, despite not having a common government, the economic, cultural, neighborhood and complementary relations, generate impacts in a city and vice versa, generating interdependencies, mutual conditioning, and a specific form of inter-urban articulation.