Student Housing, “Generationed” Space and Capitalist Urbanization
Many university cities have experienced a process of studentification, whereby students become concentrated in particular urban neighbourhoods. This process is often associated with a variety of negative impacts including noise, vandalism, and poor property upkeep, and increasingly, the development of purpose-built student accommodations. Drawing on key informant interviews and document analyses in the case of Waterloo, Ontario — Canada’s largest purpose-built student accommodation market —, I argue that contemporary studentification is an inherent feature of capitalist urbanization. The analysis combines a life course perspective with theories of urban political economy to demonstrate how studentification, as a form of “generationed” space delineated by socially constructed notions of the student life course stage, is both a product of, and serves to reproduce, capitalist urbanization. This distinction is produced and maintained at both the neighbourhood and broader scales, through strategies of the real estate sector and neighbourhood organizations, and is reinforced by local planning interventions, often with negative consequences for students’ housing experiences. The analysis also illustrates how generational differences matter to social inequality, and in doing so provides a novel explanation for age segregation. The imbrication of class and age dimensions in the context of studentification suggests a need for planning and policy to take an intergenerational approach that confronts both simultaneously in order to build a more just “post-studentification” city.