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Interesting moment in this lecture by Danny Dorling, 43m21s in:
"In Oxford, the town I grew up in, almost everybody is an immigrant. Almost everybody I went who went to school with me can't live in my town any more. I could get angry about it but I don't. The immigrants by the way are generally English."
"It's very annoying to see where you grew up get utterly, utterly changed in the way that my home town was. I get very annoyed when people complain about Roma in Sheffield, they have know idea what it's like to watch your home town completely altered by immigrants."
I moved to Oxford for my first job after university. I am part of the change that annoys Dorling. It's a great place to live if you can afford it. But I was clearly part of the force that priced out locals from their home town.
The other part of the force is the huge planning restrictions that stop Oxford from building homes, so immigrants like me end up displacing rather than supplementing existing residents.
Oxford was always going to change. It could have become bigger and found space for newcomers and established communities alike. Through its planning restrictions it chose to change the way it did instead.
If Oxford wants to stop changing both physically and demographically, how is it going to stop the next generation graduates from making the town their home? Internal immigraton controls?
I haven't decided where I'll be moving back to when I eventually move back to the UK, but moving back to Oxford is a strong candidate. But as I browse Rightmove, I'd forgotten how Oxford's housing stock is really poor. The housing is not just expensive but old, worn out and tiny.
