Student Impacts on Urban Neighbourhoods: Policy Approaches, Discourses and Dilemmas

This paper provides evidence on the impacts that students have had on neighbourhoods in five case study cities in the UK. Drawing on extensive qualitative interview data in these cities, the paper shows how national policy towards higher education had unintended and unanticipated problems for urban policy-makers. It argues that responses to these problems are shaped by discourses about what is normalised student behaviour and, implicitly, class-based ideologies. These are argued to shape the way in which the problems created by studentified neighbourhoods are perceived and the way in which local actors subsequently respond.