Author of the photo: Jan Frankowski

According to the results of research in Western Europe, academic centres stimulate the evening economy as well as the bottom-up gentrification of poor and well-located districts. In opposite, first Polish studentification studies show that the role of students in urban development is rather smaller. In 2015 we checked how it works in Gdansk.

Magdalena Szmytkowska with Monika Murzyn-Kupisz (from Cracow School of Economics) give the evidence that Polish students with lower purchasing power generally live near the university, cooking and organising their life rather at homestays than outside. Maja Grabkowska and Jan Frankowski on the basis of the big survey made on 1200 students of 3 universities confirm those findings. The case study of Wajdeloty Street clearly indicates that well-situated, older hipsters, not students are mainly responsible for the sympthoms of bottom-up, pocket gentrification. But because of the increasing number of foreign students, the status-quo may change in the near future. Enjoy your reading!

• Grabkowska M., Frankowski J., 2016, Close to the city, close to the univeristy? Are there symptoms of studentification in Gdańsk, Poland?, Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, 32, 73–83.
• Szmytkowska M., Murzyn-Kupisz M., 2015, Studentification in the post-socialist context: The case of Cracow and the Tri-City (Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot), Geografie, 120, No. 2, 188–209.