Who Belongs Here? Perceptions of Student Accommodation and Urban Identity

Walk through a city centre in the UK and you won’t have to travel far before encountering a new Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) development. Experiencing this first-hand on projects during my placement year in Bristol made it clear to me that these proposals rarely progress without significant resistance.

Read through the objections and many of the concerns raised feel both familiar and, in many cases, valid. Yet the consistency and intensity of this opposition has led me to question whether these responses instead reflect deeper assumptions about who is perceived to belong in a city.

Studentification and the need for PBSA

Across UK student markets, a persistent imbalance between supply and demand remains, with an average of 2.7 students competing for each available bed, rising to above 3.5 in cities like London and Bristol (Savills, 2024). As a result, the expansion of student accommodation has become a defining feature of many UK cities. The process of ‘studentification’, describing the dominance of student populations in local neighbourhoods, means objections are often framed around material impacts (Hubbard, 2008).

However, as Revington (2021) highlights, this viewpoint often risks oversimplifying a more complex social and spatial issue, extending to questions of how spaces are shaped, who they are designed for, and whose presence is considered legitimate.

Negative perceptions about PBSA stem, in part, from the days when student housing, particularly Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs), were basic and utilitarian. Concerns relating to parking, affordability and noise may well have been justified. High concentrations of student housing can also contribute to rising rents, displacement, and pressures on services (Morgans, 2023), and poorly integrated schemes often reinforce these divisions. But these assumptions don’t always match the realities of today’s developments.

Figure 1: A lingering perception of PBSA: Castle Leazes in Newcastle. Source: Newcastle Photos (2025), Available at: https://newcastlephotos.blogspot.com/2024/12/castle-leazes-halls-of-residence.html (Accessed: 7 April 2026)

Treating these impacts as inherent to all forms of student housing overlooks key differences. The impacts of PBSA, by comparison, are often more contained. If different models produce different outcomes, then opposition cannot be explained by impact alone.

Belonging in a city

This led me to deeper questions of identity and belonging. Students are increasingly viewed as transient and distinct from established communities (Munro and Livingstone, 2012). As a result, planning objections often reflect anxieties about change and a perceived loss of community identity. Studentification is not therefore just a physical transformation, but a social and cultural one too, where students are seen as agents of change (Smith, 2005). What follows is an unspoken ‘us vs them’ dynamic, positioning students as outsiders to more stable, established communities.

It raises the question: what defines a ‘real’ community, and are we placing too much value on permanence over other forms of belonging?

Figure 2: Reframing student living as a driver of belonging. Source: Author’s own 

Reflecting on my experience in Bristol, I initially understood these objections as issues to be resolved through design or management. However, working on PBSA schemes showed how resistance often persists regardless of any efforts of appeasement. I now understand these objections as being part of a broader negotiation over space, identity, and change.

In this negotiation, the role of design is nuanced. A more integrated approach, through active ground floor uses, shared public spaces, and mixed-use environments, can begin to position students as part of everyday urban life rather than separate from it.

Figure 3: Active ground floor uses as part of wider PBSA development proposal in Bristol. Source: Downing (2025), Available at: https://downing.com/article/nelson-street-bristol-development/ (Accessed: 8 April 2026)

Whilst such interventions may not eliminate opposition, they can influence how different groups encounter one another and how belonging is negotiated. Ultimately, maybe the question is not whether student housing belongs, but how cities negotiate belonging itself?

References

Hubbard P. (2008) Regulating the social impacts of studentification: a Loughborough case study, Environment and Planning A, 40(2), pp. 323–341

Morgans, D. (2023) The case for student living in urban design. Available at: https://www.chapmantaylor.com/insights/the-case-for-student-living-in-urban-design (Accessed: 5 April 2026).

Munro, M. and Livingston, M. (2012) Student Impacts on Urban Neighbourhoods: Policy Approaches, Discourses and Dilemmas. Urban Studies, 49(8), pp. 1679–1694.

Revington, N. (2021) Post-studentification? Promises and pitfalls of a near-campus urban intensification strategy. Urban Studies.

Savills (2024) UK cities need much higher rates of student housing delivery. Available at: https://www.savills.co.uk/blog/article/358493/commercial-property/uk-cities-need-much-higher-rates-of-student-housing-delivery.aspx (Accessed: 8 April 2026).

Smith D. P. (2005) ‘Studentification’: the gentrification factory, in: Atkinson R., Bridges G. (Eds) Gentrification in a Global Context: The New Urban Colonialism, pp. 72–89. Abingdon: Routledge.