Neighborhood safety in a university town: Linking studentification to crime and disorder

University and college towns represent distinctive physical and social environments that generate unique spatiotemporal patterns of crime and disorder. While on-campus offenses have been widely examined, crime and disorder associated with studentification (i.e., the increasing concentration of post-secondary students in off-campus residential neighborhoods) remain underexplored. This research uses Kitchener–Waterloo, Canada, a mid-sized urban area hosting three major post-secondary institutions, as a case study. A Bayesian hierarchical modeling approach is applied to analyze the associations between studentification and acquisitive crime, expressive crime, and disorder, and to assess how these associations vary across the academic calendar by distinguishing between academic terms and breaks as well as between business days and non-business days. Three studentification indicators (campus proximity measured by public transit time, student-oriented housing, and student-aged population) are used to enhance the robustness of the findings and to provide varied perspectives. The results reveal time-varying effects, with significant associations observed during academic terms but not during term breaks when students are largely absent. Within academic terms, expressive crime is linked to studentification primarily on non-business days, disorder is consistently associated with studentification and shows a stronger association on non-business days, and acquisitive crime is related to student-oriented housing throughout the term. These results highlight the need for targeted interventions in studentified neighborhoods during academic terms to promote community safety and wellbeing, such as improved bylaw enforcement, strengthened building security, and enhanced coordination with police services. • Studentification is linked to spatiotemporal offense patterns in university towns. • Disorder is associated with studentified neighborhoods during academic terms. • Expressive crime is connected to studentification on non-business days during terms. • Acquisitive crime is associated with student-oriented housing throughout the term. • Targeted crime and disorder control based on academic calendars is needed.