A condominium in this case being a geographical area of which two of more sovereignties agree to share dominium, but that title ought to do wonders for my statistics.
Anyway, I was thinking about the mapping between cities and zip codes today, which is a many-to-many relationship, and the thought popped into my head, "I wonder if there are any cities which belong to multiple countries?" In other words, are there any cities which are part of a
condominium?
So I went looking for one, not expecting to find any, and I was right -- there appear to be none. Probably a good job too.
In fact the only decent example of a condominium currently in effect seems to be that of
Pheasant Island, which is a condominium of France and Spain. It apparantly is shared on a six-monthly basis between the two nations, which leads to an interesting modelling problem -- a cyclic time-dependent relationship between geography and sovereignty. In other words, it's a time-share! (Stats again).
Anyway, I'll leave that as "an exercise for the reader".
It also raises anther question: back when one needed a passport to cross between the two countries, was a crime commited if a passport-less person was present on the island at the time that sovereignty changed? Perhaps none -- perhaps the condominium agreement allowed people of either nationality to be present on the island at any time, regardless of which state currently was in charge of it. But if the agreement did not allow this then could you charge a person with crossing a border if they were stationary at the time the offence occured?
These thoughts usually turn-up on Fridays, oddly enough. Must be something to do with blood sugar.
