2008 Volume 60 Issue 4 Pages 323-340
This paper uses an understanding of the number and location of international students to provide a new conceptual understanding of the way that a form of globalization can change the inner city of a metropolitan area. It does so through a case study in the municipality of Melbourne, in a small area at the core of the metropolitan region made up of the CBD and a surrounding area with mixed residential and commercial functions. Located within this area are two very large universities with the second and third largest number of international students in Melbourne.
The important element that shaped demand for housing in the City of Melbourne emerged from an initiative in national education policy. International students have had a small role in Australian tertiary education over a long period of time. That generally involved graduate students assisted by the Australian Federal Government. In the middle 1980s, however, new perspectives on policy were developed that would change both the scale and character of the international students within Australia in a most dramatic way, shifting the focus from graduate to undergraduate, from scholarship to fee-paying.
The importance of students in changes in the inner city of Melbourne can be seen in their contribution to population and employment growth, their impact on population structure and their contribution to the rental market which has underpinned substantial new residential construction. This illustrates that inner city change can be triggered by global connections, but that the connection and the change might be different from that suggested in current thinking on global city development.
