This relationship is very helpful for two reasons: Let's also say that you've set the remote 'origin/development' as its upstream branch. Let's say that your current local HEAD branch is named 'development'.
Why should you set up an upstream branch for a local branch? In practice, however, in makes lots of sense to see them as counterparts - connected in a so-called 'tracking connection'.
In theory, local and remote branches in Git are completely separate items.
