From Regulation to Negotiation: Adaptive Studentification in Ankara, Turkey
Studentification – the influx of university students into urban neighbourhoods – has significant socio-spatial and economic implications. While many studies analyse institutionally steered studentification shaped by universities, municipalities, or developers, studentification driven by everyday landlord–tenant negotiations in weakly regulated private rental markets receives far less scholarly attention. This article investigates such a pathway in a historically working-class neighbourhood in Ankara, Turkey, showing how bottom-up dynamics sustain coexistence yet generate new forms of precarity. Drawing on a resident survey and in-depth interviews with students, long-term residents, landlords, and business owners, the study demonstrates how student in-migration reshapes the local economy, community relations, and housing. The findings reveal rising rents, insecure tenancy, and displacement risks, alongside coexistence, neighbourhood vibrancy, and a student-driven leisure economy. In contrast to the planning- and PBSA-led models typical of the Global North (e.g. Boston, Edinburgh), studentification in Ankara unfolds through everyday landlord–tenant negotiations and peer networks rather than institutional planning. These dynamics advance the understanding of adaptive studentification, clarifying the mechanisms that maintain everyday order and the conditions that expose their limits in weakly regulated housing markets.
