Alison Boulton digs beneath the city's dreaming spires

Oxford is changing. Personal experience and hard, quantifiable data suggests an uncomfortable reality: that Oxford is becoming a city of ever increasing inequality.

Danny Dorling left Oxford as a child and returned as a parent. Growing up in Headington, he was a pupil at Cheney School, while his father worked as a GP in Cowley and Blackbird Leys.

Dorling is also a new rising star of the University, having just been appointed the Halford Mackinder Professor of Human Geography. A family man who describes his favourite activity as “building sandcastles on the beach”, Prof Dorling has noted disturbing trends on his return to his native city. Dorling’s “rummaging around in numbers” has revealed some challenging home truths.

Oxford’s university education is world renowned, yet its secondary school state sector continues to deliver, according to Dorling, a “wide range of outcomes”. Twenty eight per cent of Oxford school children are now educated in the private sector, at a cost many times greater than the school fees of the past. In this way, educational inequalities in Oxford are widening. A higher share of all the monies spent on secondary education in Oxford, just as in the country as a whole, are now spent on the children of the richest. However, four times as many children are educated privately in Oxford than are nationally.

The city is more packed than before, due to new building, yet house prices between different areas of the city have never been wider. Always more expensive and sought after, central North Oxford’s majestic Victorian urban mansions have now risen in value so much that a single sale could now purchase multiple houses in areas such as Botley and Cowley. Dorling’s data suggests that the differential between areas has never been greater.

Oxford is now the most expensive city in Britain, including London. House prices are now 11 times higher than the average city salary. Middle incomes too, have been squeezed, as Oxford’s financial elite become rapidly more wealthy, while low incomes have scarcely risen over time. Income inequality is becoming more entrenched. “Imagine how that feels? You’re a young couple who want to live in the city where they work. Nothing – nothing you can do will allow you to purchase locally. You might think twice about accepting a job here: Birmingham and London are more affordable,” Dorling said. Over time, he believes Oxford will suffer a diminution of quality of life. “We’ll end up an homogenous city of wealth, like a gated community within the ring road. All the vibrancy of a mixed community will be gone. We need to house people affordably. Oxford needs to get bigger to facilitate more lower paid workers locally,” he said.

While many Oxford residents commute to London, it’s often a substantial salary incentive which makes their journey worthwhile. Ironically, people doing many of the vital jobs within Oxford such as teachers, nurses, bank clerks, shop workers and cleaners live outside the city, and commute in. They’re hardly well rewarded for their mobility. Ring road gridlock is already occurring. “Statistics can help us to understand the pattern of peoples’ lives. We should use that information to enhance quality of life: to promote opportunity, diversity and talent, ensuring Oxford is a great city for all its inhabitants,” Dorling said.