Carlton and the Campus: The University and the Gentrification of Inner Melbourne 1958–75

Abstract

Gentrification exhibits some common traits across Western societies but takes the colour of the societies in which it appears. In Australia, one of its most striking characteristics was its close association, chronological and geographical, with the post-war expansion of the universities. This study examines the relationship between the growth of the University of Melbourne and the city's premier gentrified neighbourhood, Carlton. It argues that gentrification was preceded and shaped by a process of ‘studentification’ and that the revaluation of the inner city landscape was inseparable from new understandings of urbanity generated by academics and students drawing upon university-based systems of knowledge and cultural production.