1 | P a g e DE-STUDENTIFICATION: EMPTYING HOUSING AND NEIGHBOURHOODS OF STUDENT POPULATIONSChloe Kinton* / Darren P Smith / John Harrison Department of Geography School of Social, Political and Geographical SciencesLoughborough University Loughborough United Kingdom LE11 3TU +44 (0)1509 222791 c.kinton2@lboro.ac.uk / d.p.smith@lboro.ac.uk / j.harrison4@lboro.ac.uk *Author for correspondence 2 | P a g e AbstractInternational scholarship on student geographies and urban change continues to advance knowledge of the intense commodification of student lifestyles and student housing. The main aim of this paper is to consider some of the hitherto under-researched wider knock-on effects of more commodified student housing markets. Here we present findings from the first-ever empirical study of de-studentification. Using the case study of Loughborough, we demonstrate how de-studentification is a process of change that has been stimulated by the increased supply of purpose-built student accommodation. We show that destudentification leads to the depopulation and decline of some classical studentified neighbourhoods. Moreover, these urban transformations have several significant implications for pre-existing conceptualisations of urban change and student geographies.Notably, the impacts of de-studentification pose important questions for the conceptual boundaries of studentification -a prerequisite of de-studentification -and although, to date, dominant conceptualisations of studentification are wedded to upgrading-led representations of urban gentrification, it is shown that de-studentification, conversely, leads to physical downgrading and emptying of neighbourhoods in distinct phases. We therefore argue for a process-led definition of de-studentification, to illustrate how studentified neighbourhoods are gradually 'emptied' of student populations and student housing. More broadly, it is asserted that new student geographies are being created by the deepening neoliberalisation and commodification of higher education, which, in turn, will have unintentional consequences for wider social, cultural and economic relations in university towns and cities, such as emergent community cohesion and changing senses of place.
Studentification has permeated policy-orientated agendas on community cohesion in different national contexts and is of increasing public relevance at a time of changing systems of higher education. To date, studentification has been treated as a process of urban change that leads to the physical downgrading of neighbourhoods and social conflict, tied to concentrations of low-quality student houses in multiple occupations (HMOs). Our aim in this paper is to widen conceptual understandings of studentification, drawing upon a novel study of this process in Loughborough, UK. Focusing on the Kingfisher Estate, we provide the first investigation of the formation of a studentified neighbourhood, using data from administrative data sets to track tenurial transformations from owner-occupation to private rental shared housing. Our analyses are extended from a survey of student preferences for accommodation, and interviews with local community representatives, to reveal a production-consumption interface for high-quality student housing in Kingfisher. We argue that this is illustrative of a new frontier of studentification, which emphasises the volatility of student housing markets. Crucially, these dynamics are having a significant influence on broader changing urban geographies, such as the de-studentification of other neighbourhoods, and the overall supply of (affordable) housing. Our paper concludes by arguing for a wider conceptualisation of studentification that does not inherently view the process as a harbinger of downgraded urban environments. From a policy perspective, our research stresses the urgent need for different place-specific solutions and policy interventions to mitigate the challenges of studentification.
This paper advances current debates on relational regions and higher education through a unique focus on the rise of transregional university alliances. We examine the formation of university research and training consortia to make a series of wider arguments about the new spatialities of higher education praxis, the construction of new regional identities, and processes of institutionalising relational regions. Our research shows new partnership working between universities to be conducive to the weakening of fixed regional territories. It then illustrates how and why some relational imaginaries are beginning to crystallise into harder institutional forms, before revealing significant politicaleconomic and societal implications arising from new institutional geographies of higher education. Furthermore, our research reveals the concerted theoretical and empirical attention required to develop vocabulary and frameworks better able to comprehend emergent regional worlds. For our part, we distinguish between territorial, archipelagic, de facto and constellatory regionalism to exact more precise interpretations of unfolding configurations of relational regions a new conceptual perspective on the increasingly complex spatialities characterising and shaping our globalizing world.
This paper opens up debates about the deepening uneven geographies of higher education through a critical analysis of transregional university alliances. Focusing on the formation of research consortia and Doctoral Training Centres we reveal the emergence of over fifty transregional alliances between UK universities. Despite each consortium operating at a variously defined regional scale there has been no explicit attempt to account for their geographical basis. Providing the first-ever analysis of this unfolding phenomenon, we demonstrate how the rise of transregional alliances is indicative of, and a response to, universities operating in an intensely neoliberalised political economy. Bringing together emergent theories of regionalism with emerging worlds of (neoliberal) higher education, our paper reveals how, why and where universities are engaging in more intensively targeted, exclusive approaches to regional development. We argue that higher education is conducive to the weakening of fixed regional territories and propose the metaphor of 'regional constellations' for interpreting transregional geographies. Finally, our analysis suggests that while high-performing research institutions may compete better by forming consortia, transregional alliances lead to a more unequal and divided university sector.
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