Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Ordos China the dissertation ‘Un-real Estate’ traces a local economic boom into its subsequent bust. It gives an account of how state as well as non-state actors appropriate state development schemes and the unintended effects resulting from the colluding forces of plan and profit. Through the attitudes, perceptions, and forms of sociality that constituted an actual economic bubble (and its subsequent collapse) the dissertation provides ethnographic detail relevant for understanding contemporary China, the social effects of economic development, and state-led urbanization.