Students in my backyard: locating areas for purpose-built student accommodations near campus

The City of Toronto is home to four major universities and over 184,000 post-secondary students, most of whom will need a place to call home. It has become typical for students at urban universities to be housed on campus in student residences for first year, after which most students will seek accommodation in the neighbourhoods closest to campus. There are many factors affecting the ability for students to locate close to campus, of which affordability is at the forefront. The research of this paper is two-fold; locate areas close to each of Toronto’s four university campuses which may accommodate purpose-built student accommodations and refine these areas to identify areas where the development can be delivered as a mid-rise typology. Through intensification capacity modelling, underutilized sites within areas close to campus were identified for their suitability to respond to both city initiatives of providing student housing and finding the missing middle on housing density were identified. Identifying these sites allows for city planners and universities to anticipate the concentration of students in existing neighbourhoods and plan for the effects of ‘studentification’, both as a tension between students and neighbours and for the regenerative effects on the community. Key Words student housing, studentification, mid-rise housing, missing middle, intensification