Studentification and ‘Apprentice’ Gentrifiers within Britain's Provincial Towns and Cities: Extending the Meaning of Gentrification

Abstract

This paper focuses on processes of studentification, and explores the link between higher education students and contemporary provincial gentrification. The paper provides two main, interconnected, contributions to advance debates on gentrification. First, the discussion appeals for wider temporal analyses of the lifecourses of gentrifiers to trace the formation and reconfiguration of the cultural and residential predilections of gentrifiers across time and space. With this in mind, it is argued that there is a need to rethink the role of students within the constraints of third-wave gentrification, and to consider how`student experiences' may influence the current and future residential geographies of young gentrifiers within provincial urban locations. Drawing upon recent studies of studentification, it is asserted that this profound expression of urban change is indicative of gentrification. Second, the paper advances Clark's recent call to extend the term gentrification to embrace the wider dominant hallmarks and tendencies of urban transformations. Controversially, in light of a deepening institutionalisation of gentrification, we contend that gentrification can be most effectively employed at a revised conceptual level to act as a referent of the common outcomes of a breadth of processes of change.

Studentification, diversity and social cohesion in post-socialist Budapest

“…2002(Smith, D.P. , 2005Smith, D.P. and Holt, L. 2007;Davidson, D. 2009;Murzyn-Kupisz, M. and Szmytkowska, M. 2015).…”

“…According to Smith (2002) and Smith and Holt (2007) changes generated by studentification have four basic dimensions: economic, social, cultural and physical. The economic dimension refers to changes like the revalorisation of the housing stock, the growing significance of renter-occupancy or -since short-term rental becomes dominant on the housing market instead of long-term rental -the emergence of speculative investments (Rugg, J. et al 2002;Smith, D.P.…”

Les jeunes familles au coeur des transformations des quartiers péricentraux : le cas d’Ahuntsic à Montréal

“…Avancé par Goodsell (2013), le concept de « familification », logé à la suite de la « genderfication » (Van Den Berg, 2013), la « greentrification » (Atkinson et Bridge, 2004), la « studentification » (Smith, 2008;Smith, 2005;Smith et Holt, 2007), ou bien encore la « youthification » (Moos, 2014a et 2014b), offre la possibilité d'étudier comment l'arrivée de familles constitue un moteur de changements au sein du quartier montréa-lais péricentral d'Ahuntsic. Le concept de « familification » tel que proposé par Goodsell se situe dans une perspective de gentrification, perspective qu'il est préférable d'éloigner théoriquement afin d'analyser les processus de transformations sociales des quartiers qui n'ont pas pour conséquence le déplacement des populations anciennes, souvent plus défavorisées, du quartier.…”

‘Close to the city centre, close to the university’. Are there symptoms of studentification in Gdańsk, Poland?

“…Students are thus identified as 'apprentice gentrifiers' , i.e. potential future gentrifiers (Smith and Holt, 2007) or even actors of marginal gentrification (cf. Grzeszczak, 2010).…”