New City Committee

Regarding potential new sister cities for Durham, NC, the New City Committee develops our guidelines and makes recommendations to the SCD Board of Directors. Please email our New City Committee Chair on our "Contacts" page for our application.

How Do Cities Find Each Other?

In general, it is wise for cities to pursue a relationship with a community that is as similar as possible in terms of geography, population, industries and interests.  On the other hand, there are many successful “marriages” of opposites.

Sometimes it is a top-down process, where two mayors meet and become friends, then involve the rest of their community.  Other times, it is a bottom-up process where a group or individual in the community (an educator, a businessman/woman, a service club or an ethnic association), organize a committee of volunteers, then request an official partnership.  Some cities link because they share the same name, or celebrate the same famous festival.

Sister Cities International also acts as a matchmaker, utilizing its “Cities Seeking Cities” section of the International Community Resource Center (ICRC), which enables communities to “meet” one another by reviewing on-line profiles.  All communities, both U.S. and international, must complete a “Request for a Sister City” form in order to participate in this on-line service.

July 2010 visit to a Chinese city

Exploration of a potential new sister city: Raleigh has recently signed a sister city agreement with Xiangfan in Hubei Province and Pinehurst will be signing an agreement in the fall with Zhijiang in Hunan Province. Durham is also considering a potential Chinese sister city, along with other candidates from other continents.  

Margaret Harrison, a Director of Sister Cities of Durham, has returned from a 10 day trip in July 2010, sponsored by the Carolina China Council, to Hunan Province, China where she attended the 2010 International Friendship Cities Cooperation Forum as a special envoy from Sister Cities of Durham. 

The Hunan regional forum was a magnificent affair with representatives from over 15 different countries and numerous cities in the United States.  While at the conference she signed a “letter of intent, through friendly consultations, to explore the establishment of friendship-city relation”, which is non-binding.

She spent an afternoon in Zhuzhou, where she visited a museum of the city, toured factories that builds high speed trains and electric buses and had a sumptuous dinner with Wang Qun, Mayor of Zhuzhou Municipal People’s Government. The mayor asked Ms. Harrison to extend his greetings to Durham's Mayor Bell. 
 
Zhuzhou is an average sized Chinese city of 3.2 million. (It can be found on GoogleMaps by searching "Zhuzhou, Hunan, China"; it is in the middle of the eastern, southern side of China.) The city is very modern, with most of the city growth within the last 20 years.  You see new construction everywhere.  There is a river that runs through the city.  There are green areas that run throughout the city center. 

The mayor seemed most interested in pursuing a possible sister city relationship.   He expressed interest in increasing tourism to the area, as well as possible educational and business exchanges. 
 
Ms. Harrison has reported to Mayor Bell, the New Cities Evaluation Committee (NCC) of Sister Cities of Durham, and the Board of Directors of Sister Cities.  She emailed thanks for the tour and dinner to Guo Xiaodan, the Deputy Director of Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office in Zhuzhou, her guide while in Zhuzhou.