Closest City Pairs #2

Damascus is in the first of these quizzes as well. Also it's "Ciudad Juarez"

Yes please replace Damascus

Isn't Fort Worth closest to Dallas? Perhaps it would be worth making clear that the small print on citypopulation.de's website next to Dallas says "includes Fort Worth", hence the Austin answer.

Fort Worth is nearly always considered part of the Dallas area. Their two central business districts are a mere 20 miles apart, and the entire area between them is urbanized except for the Trinity River floodplain. The major airport there is named Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The two cities economies and cultures are tightly integrated, and people regularly commute between the two on a daily basis. That they are considered one metropolis is pretty common knowledge, and even if you don't know that, typing "Fort Worth" and realizing it doesn't work should be enough to push you in the right direction.

It's a little over 30 miles, similar to Washington and Baltimore, which are more densely built up.

But it doesn't accept Guangzhou, but insists that we have to type Shenzhen in. And they are also commonly thought of as the same city.

Also, El Paso's urban area population is 830,000 - and that's being generous, because that "urban area" includes 4500 sq miles of surrounding rural land. The only way to get past a million population is to note that its urban area, when twinned with Las Cruces' urban area, forms El Paso–Las Cruces Combined Statistical Area - basically two cities 50 miles apart, grouped together statistically for no reason anyone can think of. So, my suggestion for the Ciudad Juarez answer would be Phoenix.

Are there people within those 50 miles that commute 25 miles (or 50) in either direction to go to work? I know that's sometimes how urban area is defined.

Then Portland, Maine has an "urban" area of 800,000. If you've ever been there, you know that isn't the adjective you're looking for.

Juarez and El Paso obviously exist in the middle of the desert emptiness directly staring at each other, because of each other. Looking across the treeless landscape or watching the thriving bridge traffic, calling them separate urban areas defies all logic.

I typed in Beirut! :P Must have misspelled it. Man that one was bugging me.

Wow! Tough quiz. Enjoyed it though.

I got all but Edmonton/Calgary and Beijing/Tianjin. Enjoyed this and I hopefully wish to see more of these appear in the future :)

Great quiz. Got 18, missing Minneapolis/Milwaukee and Hong Kong/Shenzhen. I notice that no-one has bothered to fix the spelling mistake pointed out by the first comment. So can I just say that Cairo is actually spelt with a silent 'p'.

Depending on how you measure the distance either city hall to city hall or edge of metropolitan area to edge of metropolitan area you get two different cities for Dallas. City hall to city hall is Austin. MSA to MSA OKC.

Spelling: "Ciudad Juárez"

For Hong Kong, Shenzhen is the answer, but Shenzhen is in the same urban area as Guangzhou according to the source... Can we at least make Guangzhou work, even if Shenzhen is displayed?

Since citypopulation.de uses the urban area of Guangzhou, not Shenzhen, Guangzhou shouldn't work, but should be the answer. Also Pretoria is considered part of the Johannesburg urban area for the source being used so that one should be completely eliminated.

Yeah I was wondering that too. Seems like it should be fixed?

A lot of the cities are part of the same urban areas though, so it's very inconcistant.

It would be pretty cool to see the distances with the answers. I have to imagine it would be vastly different between, say Hong Kong and its answer compared to Minneapolis and its answer