Students and the urban renaissance

摘要

Previous articles in Town & Country Planning have suggested that the movement of people out of the central cities of England's main conurbations outside London has slowed over the 1990s; from an annual net outflow of 4,500 in 1991 to 3,400 in 2000. It has been suggested that this may mark some sort of turning point in the trend of 'counterurbanisation' that has led the population to 'vote with its feet' and abandon metropolitan areas over the last four decades. Perhaps before we begin celebrating the advent of the 'urban renaissance' that the Government so earnestly wishes to deliver, we should examine the nature of migration to and from central metropolitan cities. Urban Exodus, a study carried out by Champion et al. of the migration trends identified in the 1991 Census found that high levels of both in-and out-migration were associated with healthy, upper-income areas located near metropolitan edges: effectively, migrants were 'boundary-hopping' to and from more salubrious areas of cities.