WHERE DID THE NEIGHBOURHOOD GO? A LOOK INTO THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTIONS OF STUDENTS ACROSS ONTARIO MID-SIZED CITIES

Abstract

Enrollment in higher educational institutions (HEI) has been steadily increasing across Canada, while on-campus accommodation provided by the HEI has plateaued. As a result, a majority of upper-year students now turn towards near-campus neighbourhoods for accommodation, displacing many long-term residents and occupying many low-income units. This process, by which residential neighbourhoods become dominated by student occupation, is known as studentification. Surprisingly, municipalities and HEIs collect little information about the locations of student dwellings. Fortunately, the Canadian Census does not clarify students living away from their parents’ home as occupants of a dwelling, so we can assume that “unoccupied” dwelling units near an HEI are filled with students. This report estimates unoccupied dwellings as potential student dwellings to provide a picture of the geographies of studentification in eleven mid-sized university cites in Ontario.