IN-PERSON London. Section A

Abstract

Every year, students move into a city to pursue a higher education and settle into a new home, often in cities. Those students are a special cohort of urban dwellers. Affordable restaurants and small business shops and vendors occupy neighborhoods surrounding campus to meet students’ daily demands. Students’ lifestyles shape the neighborhoods’ landscape and create urban change over time. Such developments have long existed in European contexts and have been discussed among scholars around the world. African cities also experience this phenomenon and drive urban transformation while urban populations are also growing. In the context of this unique change, students become the driving force of urban development. Building on existing literature on studentification in the field of urban studies, this paper takes Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, as an example. It explores first, how students choose a type of student housing, second, how students’ everyday lives create different urban footprints depending on the type of student housing, and third, how students transform urban living. The research uses a multi-sited ethnographic research method, including netnography, visual ethnography, and interviews with mental mapping and flash cards method to explore these three themes through the lens of three types of student housing: halls of residence, private hostels, and rentals. This study discusses everyday life in the notion of studentification and what makes students’ dwellings livable.