This chapter first provides some background on the state of urban conditions in Shanghai in the 1980s, including three prominent waves of protests stemming from national politics but also reflecting high levels of dissatisfaction with living conditions in the city. It then turns to the specifics of housing policy, demolition and relocation, and deindustrialization, including the mass layoffs of Shanghai’s textile workforce of about one-half million during the mid-1990s. The transformation of urban space that constituted the “Shanghai miracle” in the 1990s and early 2000s brought forth altered forms of contentious politics, ones anchored in a politics of compensation (and with it, property valuation). The protection of housing and residence, and resistance to state projects that would threaten to remove or relocate residential housing, or to influence property values, featured prominently in contentious claims. As was the case in Mumbai, urban citizenship was closely linked with ownership and possession of housing (in its various forms).