The rapid growth of purpose built student accommodation developed by the private sector has become a salient addition to the built environment of many British cities since the beginning of the 21st century. The city of Sheffield has been the site of some of most sustained inflows of investment capital for private sector, purpose built, student accommodation (private sector PBSA), in the UK since 2000. This thesis focuses on first quantifying the scale of this investment and the outcomes of it, and then strives to explain the reasons why this has occurred and to consider its impacts upon the city centre.
To address this goal the thesis employs a mixed methods explanatory sequential research model that utilizes Pierre Bourdieu’s Field Theory as both an operational guide and as a conceptual frame. First, quantifying the scale and characteristics of private sector investment in purpose built, student accommodation across central Sheffield, and within demarcated neighbourhoods is set out. From this empirical base a conceptualization of the component parts that assemble to create the field of production of private sector PBSAs is elucidated. This is followed by an examination of the relational construction of the field examined through a series of semi-structured interviews and interactions with a wide of range of actors holding different depths and types of capital within the field, or development nexus.
The empirical findings of the research confirm that the growth of private sector PBSAs in central Sheffield has occurred in two distinct tranches from 2005 to 2009, and 2015 to 2019, and that investment has become increasing international. The early private sector PBSA developers were more local and speculative in approach and were responding to the creation of a market by both national higher education policy and local interpretations of that policy.
The Sheffield experience of this national dynamic has been shaped by a local particularism created differentially by both universities in the city with a focus on the recruitment of international and post-graduate students at The University of Sheffield and the holding of no internal student accommodation estate by Sheffield Hallam University.
