Haparanda in the context of "Tornio"

Twin cities are a special case of two neighboring cities or urban centres that grow into a single conurbation – or narrowly separated urban areas – over time. There are no formal criteria, but twin cities are generally comparable in status and size, though not necessarily equal; a city and a substantially smaller suburb would not typically qualify, even if they were once separate. Tri-cities and quad cities are similar groups of three or four municipalities.

A common – but not universal – scenario is two cities that developed concurrently on opposite sides of a river. For example, Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota – one of the most widely known pairs of "Twin Cities" – were founded several miles apart on opposite sides of the Mississippi River, and competed for prominence as they grew.

The Barents Region is a name given, by advocates of establishing international cooperation after the fall of the Soviet Union, to the land along the coast of the Barents Sea, from Nordland county in Norway to the Kola Peninsula in Russia and beyond all the way to the Ural Mountains and Novaya Zemlya, and south to the Gulf of Bothnia of the Baltic Sea and the great lakes Ladoga and Onega. Among the projects is the Barents Road from Bodø in Norway through Haparanda in Sweden and Finland to Murmansk in Russia. The region has six million inhabitants on 1.75 million km; three quarters of both belong to Russia.

The regional cooperation was formally opened on 11 January 1993, initiated by Norway under foreign minister Thorvald Stoltenberg. It includes Nordland, Troms, and Finnmark counties in Norway; Västerbotten County and Norrbotten County in Sweden; Lapland region, Northern Ostrobothnia, Kainuu, and North Karelia in Finland; and Murmansk Oblast, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Komi Republic, Republic of Karelia, and Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Russia. The four countries take turns at chairing the cooperation. Norway's participation is coordinated from the Norwegian Barents Secretariat in Kirkenes. Sweden's and Finland's participation is administrated from the county administrations in Umeå (Västerbotten) and Rovaniemi (Lapland). In January 2008 there was established an International Barents Secretariat which is to provide technical support for the multilateral coordinated activities within the framework of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council and the Barents Regional Council. This Secretariat is located in Kirkenes in the same building as the Norwegian Barents Secretariat.

Haparanda Municipality (Swedish: Haparanda kommun; Meänkieli and Finnish: Haaparannan kunta) is a municipality in Norrbotten County in northern Sweden. Its seat is located in Haparanda (Meänkieli: Haaparanta).

In 1967 the "City of Haparanda" was merged with the rural municipalities Karl Gustav and Nedertorneå. Since 1971 Haparanda, like all other municipalities of Sweden, is a municipality of unitary type. However, it prefers to use the title stad ("city") for the whole territory, including the non-urban parts.