India, Nov. 2 -- In Shenzhen, a fishing and farming county that became a metropolis within a few decades of 1980, the state acquired the surrounding farmland while the villagers kept their residential plots. On those acquired plots, they built upward until neighbouring blocks stood close enough for residents to shake hands from their windows - which is why these buildings acquired the local nickname "handshake buildings." They are usually read as a failure of planning, but they also record how a community contracts when a city closes in, keeping its ancestral halls, lineage ties and collective ownership inside a footprint that shrinks every year. A place compressed in this way stores force, and what is released when it is broken can be fa...