What Michigan Cities Have a Big Sibling – Little Sibling Relationship?

There are many cities around the country and around the world that can be thought of as having a big brother/little brother or big sister/little sister relationship.

How many of those big/little cities exist in Michigan?

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The question is inspired by a discussion thread on the Reddit forum dedicated to geography that asked about this exact topic.

There are several examples from around American that come to mind pretty quickly: Los Angeles/San Diego, San Francisco/Oakland, Seattle/Tacoma, Boston/Providence.

Around the Great Lakes consider Buffalo/Niagara Falls or Cleveland/Akron. Just south of the Michigan state line is the pairing of South Bend and Elkhart, Indiana.

For Michigan, there are several that come to mind.

And it should be noted we're not talking suburbs here. Dearborn, for example is a suburb of Detroit, not a seperate metro area that's overshadowed by the other. Same can be said for Pontiac, Sterling Heights or Warren.

Detroit does present an interesting case study. Would a little sibling be Toledo, Ohio or Windsor, Ontario? Perhaps. We decided to keep it in Michigan and chose Flint.

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We debated over pairs like Lansing/East Lansing, Houghton/Hancock, St. Joseph/Benton Harbor and the Tri Cities of Saginaw/Bay City/Midland but ended up not including them as they would be considered the same metro rather than one metro area overshadowing another.

Stretching across the state and and spanning both peninsulas, here are Michigan's Big/Little combos: