Hybrid institutions: where the cultural space is also "home"

In many contemporary cities, the ways in which communities form and shared resources are established and made available reflect particular conditions shaped by contemporary life: population mobility takes millions of people far from their hometowns; a "compressed modernity" concentrates within a single generation social transformations that elsewhere might have unfolded over a century; and intense working rhythms continually encroach on personal time and private life.
When "home" is elsewhere, a sense of belonging needs to be built anew in the places where people arrive.
Shenzhen is perhaps one of the clearest examples of this phenomenon. From its beginnings as a border city, it has grown in just over four decades into a metropolis of nearly 18 million people, with population growth driven almost entirely by migration. It also has one of China's youngest populations and an exceptionally high proportion of permanent residents without local household registration. People come here and increasingly choose to stay, marry, have children, raise them and send them to school here.