When I first moved to Glasgow from Canada, I lived in a flat with four Hungarian students. I was 21 years old and in a new country for the first time. Situated on the top floor of a tenement in Finnieston, this flat is what I think of when I think of student accommodation.

Entering was like walking into a fun house. All of the floors sloped at a 45 degree angle towards a central support beam that ran through the hallway. Surveyors came by to check it out once. “It’s safe but I wouldn’t want my daughter living here,” one said.

Cracks in the walls had been filled with spray foam. “We had wasps before you moved in,” my friend Nora told me. Builders renovating a restaurant unit below kept leaving the close door open. Pigeons began nesting on our doormat. The vicious beasts would swoop aggressively at my head while I fumbled with my keys. I took to leaving piles of sticks at all levels of the stairs to swat about in self-defence. Oh, and there were mice too (obviously).

There are plans for an 18-storey student block on Renfield Street in Glasgow (Image: free)

It certainly wasn’t The Ritz, but we felt a sense of freedom living there. We would pile all the furniture into one of the smaller bedrooms and host parties with my friends’ entire university class. We could come and go as we pleased. Friends visiting from abroad were always welcome to crash. And it cost us each less than £300 a month in digs.

I wonder if this experience (I call it character building) is why I loathe the thought of purpose built student accommodation so much? It just feels so soulless, so clinical. It’s the McDonaldization of the student experience: accessible to a wider range of people but devoid of creativity. What’s more, the private ones charge per week what I paid for a month.

Every morning I read about a new mega........

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