Walking back into town from the Schwarzman Centre, I pass all kinds of places that make Oxford feel lived in rather than merely studied. A restaurant preparing for the evening’s bookings. A pub garden where conversations spill into the cold air. A community noticeboard layered with ads for yoga classes, lost cats, and open mics. The spire of a University building rises just beyond a row of independent cafes. This stretch of road is not spectacular in the same way as the Rad Cam or Bodleian; it’s not curated for prospectuses or postcards. But it is the palimpsestic fabric of the city – the in-between space where town and gown brush against each other. It is also a space that feels increasingly fragile.
The glass, light, and grandeur of Oxford’s many faculties and study spaces are a gleaming symbol of the University’s cultural ambition. And yet, walking amongst them, I am reminded that the future is being built quite literally on the footprint of existing communities. Every new development has had a previous tenant, a former use, a set of memories that rarely make it into planning documents.
That reminder was particularly harrowing when I stopped for a coffee in one of my favourite spots in Oxford: Common Ground Cafe. Situated on the bustling Little Clarendon Street, it is an independent space that prides itself on community arts and co-working, hosting spoken word nights, gigs, vintage clothes and record sales, and more. On any given day you might find students editing essays beside local artists planning exhibitions, while freelancers hunch over their laptops to the muffled sound of old friends catching up. It is a porous space, one where the categories of “student” and “resident” feel entirely irrelevant.
It was an unremarkable Tuesday. I ordered a croissant, opened my laptop, and glanced up at the noticeboard – usually a collage of DJ nights, book clubs, and invitations to group discussions about activism and advocacy. But this time, it was the bold lettering of a different poster that dominated my view. “OXFORD UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT”, it read, underlined. Beneath it was a planning notice for the demolition and redevelopment of Wellington Square.
The language of planning documents was plastered so awkwardly amongst those chatting, typing, and queueing for coffee. Life carried on. But here in front of me was notice of a ticking time bomb, as all this was doomed to be replaced by something new.
‘Perhaps change is good?’, I thought to myself. It was natural, after all, as buildings, businesses, and initiatives come and go all the time. It was likely going to be replaced by an academic space, for the benefit of Oxford University’s students. What was wrong with that?
But Common Ground is no relic, nor a romanticised holdout against progress. It is contemporary, adaptive, responsive. Living and breathing. Why was that any less important? Any less deserving of a place in modern Oxford?
The cafe’s Instagram had more information about how they hoped to continue despite the redevelopment plans made by the University. And after seeing wide-spread discussion about how the future of Common Ground may look, I began to feel slightly better.
But as I walked down St Giles last week, unthinking, I was struck once again by these same feelings and questions. That same day, I had just discovered that the Oxfam on the corner of Pusey Street was set to be closed.
While not the only second-hand book shop in Oxford, it was certainly a favourite amongst many of my fellow humanities students. The reason for its closing simply did not sit right with me. A charitable organisation, selling often hard-to-come-by books at an affordable price, was set to be demolished for the sake of Regent’s Park College’s desire for a Middle Common Room. This was no upgrade in the name of public benefit, it was an act of private enclosure.
Oxford is a constantly evolving institution, and its buildings inevitably reflect changing academic needs. But when redevelopment becomes synonymous with displacement, we must ask what kind of city is being constructed alongside the University’s future. As more and more city spaces are erased to make way for University spaces, we need to be thinking about the long-term consequences of this ‘studentification’.
Because what is lost is not simply square footage. It is inclusivity. It is the accidental conversations between people who would otherwise never share a table. It is the charity bookshop where a first-year can buy a dog-eared copy of a theorist they cannot quite afford new, and the cafe where a local band plays to a room that contains as many residents as undergraduates. These places are not peripheral to Oxford’s identity; they are what make it breathable.
The slow consolidation of Oxford City into an ever-more enclosed, University-owned space risks narrowing the surroundings that we claim to value. A Middle Common Room may enrich student life for some, but what of the wider world beyond college walls?
This is not an argument against growth, nor against the University meeting genuine academic needs. It is an argument for proportion, imagination, and responsibility. For asking whether expansion must always mean acquisition. For recognising that “public benefit” cannot be measured solely in seminar rooms and study spaces. For acknowledging that a city in which independent, charitable, and community-led spaces are permanently precarious is a threat to Oxford’s culture.
The clash of town and gown is age-old, yet the two are undoubtedly mutually shaping. If one side absorbs the physical ground of the other, that balance begins to falter. The risk is not dramatic decline, but gradual homogenisation – a city that feels increasingly curated, wholly institutional, closed off from ‘real life’.
If we want Oxford to remain more than a collection of lecture halls and libraries – if we want it to remain lived in rather than merely studied in – then we must be willing to defend the fragile, ordinary places where its shared life unfolds.
