In an increasingly polarised world where demagogues demand walls and barriers to keep common people apart in a state of hostility and fear, one needs to look back at a dark time in human history when the very noble concept of sister cities or twin-towning gained traction. In 1942, Alfred Grindlay, mayor of the English city of Coventry, which was bombed by Nazi Germany two years earlier, sent a telegram to the people of Stalingrad, then under a massive siege from the Germans. This telegram, which expressed a sense of solidarity, paved the way for a sister-city or twin-town arrangement....