GA2024 - Field visit: Changing landscape of student housing

Introduction

By a twist of fate, I ended up with a field visit to understand the various student accommodation offered at the universities of Manchester (UM) and the Metropolitan Manchester (MMU). While I wasn’t too excited about it initially, what proved to be a “walk in the park” type of visit, demonstrated layers of complexity – competing urban development, citizen voices and the inevitable forces of economics. This field visit inspired me to consider weaving in narratives to our human geography topics in our geography curriculum, to bring out enduring concepts that makes geography a subject for everyone (more on this in a later post).

The University of Manchester (UM) has a long history of 200 years. Founded in 1824, it remains the seat of academic learning. MMU started out as a polytechnic and was later upgraded to a university specialising in vocational courses. Hence MU has a longer history in offering on-site student accommodation to local and international students among residential housing neighbourhoods that surround it. This is where the story gets going.

 

The MU housing story

MU owned parcels of land on its extensive campus where it provided university-controlled student accommodation. This is similar to universities in Singapore where we have the not so imaginatively numbered halls in NTU, to the those in NUS whose hall names are steeped in Singapore’s political history (such as Raffles and Sheares). What caused MU to cease providing large scale university-controlled student accommodation was because there were rent-strikes by students. Yes, you heard it right, rent strikes! These frequent strikes put MU in a difficult position – to provide housing to their students at the expense of losing a source of income. To demand that these vacate their premise ran contrary to their philosophy of students’ welfare.

 

To make things simpler, the idea of inviting private developers to raise blocks of private-built student accommodation (PBSA) was hence mooted. In the photographs below, it is clear that PBSA is the accommodation of choice for students at MU - modern plumbing, efficient heating and cooling, and a more conducive and secure environment for the students. The story would have ended here. Simple, just put everyone into PBSA, and tear down the old MU-owned accommodation.

Photo 1 - MU provided student accommodation is old and run-down.

 

Photo 2 - In contrast, PBSA are new and attractive (at much higher rental costs too)

Because this story happened in the context of existing residential neighbourhoods around MU, it was far from simple. When the demand of student accommodation went up, existing house owners in the neighbourhood decided to rent out their century-old housing stock to students. With this new “entrant” into the scene for student accommodation, things got messy. There were no longer controls over who, when, where and what were rented to students of MU. It became a free market of sorts. Often, unscrupulous landlords would sub-divide their units into smaller ones with the hope of making a windfall in rental. More enterprising ones even bought up an entire street of houses, converting them into cramped student spaces to rake in more money. Displacement and discontent followed. Existing residents had their arms up in the air, with the increased noise, litter and unauthorized sub-standard extensions. These changed the entire feel and culture of the neighbourhoods. We witnessed this physical change of housing stock within a 300 m stretch along Denmark Road and its side streets such as Acomb Street (photo 3).  

Photo 3 - These are century-old housing stock that is sub-divided and rented out to students

 

Because of PBSA being the more expensive accommodation option setting the bar, local landlords of these century-old workers’ houses also raised their rents, pricing local MU students out of the student accommodation market. This further led to sub-divisions of housing units for students to rent. As a result, the situation got so bad that many were paying over-priced accommodation in rather squalid conditions. 

 

Role of citizen advocacy

This story also showcased the strong community advocacy efforts of the local residents that live in the vicinity of MU and MMU. Due to the strong demand of PBSA, developers have been buying up land parcels within the neighbourhoods to build more and more PBSAs. The PBSAs are often multi-storied behemoths, dwarfing the local state-built housing stock. Old places were bulldozed and replaced with shiny glass and brick clad structures, whose inhabitants are ephemeral. Students come and go within years and lack the rootedness of local residents who have spent their entire life times living in these neighbourhoods.

 

Along the field visit, we were shown strong citizen action that opposed the building of a PBSA on a run-down pub site (photo 4) at Boundary Lane. Tis site has been the hot button issue for many residents who have lived their entire lives here, and many are in the 70s or older. There were fiery confrontations and contestations which resulted in a “block the block” movement by the locals (photo 5). Interestingly, a resident queried our field visit facilitator from her third level apartment if he was bringing buyers (all of us on the field visit) around the neighbourhood to shop for land. This clearly showed the tremendous involvement of the locals in resisting an inevitable economic process and an urban eventuality.

 

Photo 4 - The pub site which has temporarily turned into a carpark lot (the pub is the building in white)

Photo 5 - Evidence of resistance in the community 

The negotiation with local authorities did not always end up in a stalemate. We crossed the Epping Walk Bridge to enter MMU territory to reach what our field visit facilitator termed the boundary line between the universities’ zone and the inner-city zone at Old Birley Street. Down there, we saw how positive citizen effort and authorities’ willingness to listen resulted in a win-win for both parties. Community sensitive housing design that allow residents to interact above the street level, inclusion of local businesses, and the conversion of what was originally going to be a car parking facility into a community garden centre complete with a café can be found here, all demonstrating a possible urban solution. 

Photo 6 - Win-win community sensitive housing design that features suspended walkways that allow residents to interact, and locating local businesses at the ground level.

Photo 7 - The Hulme Community Garden Centre

 

What I learnt

 

Often, the world around us may be presented to our students as an unproblematic objective one. We study solutions that are couched in scientific and engineering terms. What human geography is and should uncover, is the humanistic angle of our world. Situating the MU student accommodation in a theme of “controversial development” offers to me an opportunity to learn about facts through real-life stories. How many of us Geography teachers are sensitive to the disciplinary lens Geography offers? How might we tap on these lenses to help our students understand the complexity of urban development, the importance of citizen voices and choices? How do we contextualise these conflicting perspectives in the wider world of policies and economics? 

 

If we do not appreciate these useful nexuses of connections as Geography teachers, we risk missing out the immense potential of this powerful subject in helping our students navigate their future. Unpacking 21^st century competencies alongside the geography curriculum, taking advantage of community stories as learning resources and linking them back to the broader goals of a geography education is a direction that we need to seriously consider if we were to nurture a generation of geographically literate and sensitive youths. Are we ready for this challenge?