Rooming flats: How financialisation-led densification is spurring inner-city studentification in Lodz, Poland

Abstract

University towns and cities face the need to accommodate sizeable student populations. Consequently, they are fertile grounds for housing financialisation and densification, and their neighbourhoods experience studentification. In this article, we consider the nexus of these three phenomena by investigating the production of ‘rooming flats’ in Lodz, Poland. Rooming flats are accommodations delivered usually through a profit-seeking conversion of conventional spacious flats in historic inner-city buildings into shared housing with multiple single-occupancy bedrooms for student rentals. We empirically illustrate the rooming flats in Lodz: their materialities, geographies, labelling and impacts on the inner city, as well as the rooming-flat business itself. In this way, we demonstrate the interplay of financialisation, densification and studentification and show how it contributes to the multifaceted change of the inner city in Lodz.