I don't blame you for not visiting Cardiff lately. You're not at the stage in your life where a Norman motte-and-bailey is of sincere interest, and outside of Wales rugby is the preserve of the deeply troubled and privately educated. It's a shame, because besides the castle – a pitifully ironic monument to Welsh erasure – and the stadium, there is little in the city centre you can call distinct, and the pockets that do remain face a familiar threat.

Welcome to Cardiff, currently plagued by luxury student flat developments. Over the last five years, 7,400 rooms have been approved across multiple sites in the city centre. However, with student numbers falling and prices far beyond the reach of most, people are asking if developers have a more worrying agenda.

The Full Moon has become "Bootlegger", a prohibition-themed cocktail bar for beard oil enthusiasts, while Gareth Bale has turned Four Bars into a major Jeans & Sheux thoroughfare with an expensive-pints sports bar. But other spaces have made way for large-scale property developments, one type of which is proving particularly loathsome: luxury, purpose-built student accommodation, or PBSA.

The demolition of Guilford Crescent – one of the last sets of Victorian terraces, home to a beloved nightspot and two family-run restaurants – was proof for many that a great dull wave is flattening Cardiff, washing up high rises and sweeping in crap gourmet burger options. Music and arts venues like Gwdihŵ, The Moon Club, Four Bars, The Abacus – spaces which valued cheap cans, weirdos and rowdy South Wales conviviality – are all gone.

Another thing that's missing is students. The day before the start of the September term, at least 25 percent of Zenith’s rooms were still available to view and rent – and it's not the only PBSA in the city to face difficulties. A report from CPS Homes, a Cardiff Estate Agent, said that by July of 2019 several developments had yet to hit 50 percent occupancy. Perhaps it’s because nobody wants to spend their formative year in higher education on a building site, since Zenith overlooks a huge office development. Meanwhile, this was "The West Wing" the night before its September opening:

Behold Zenith, a 675-room nightmare-in-beige that now towers over the city centre. A room in a five-bedroom apartment is yours for £155 a week (that's £7,905 for the year). If you have the means, you can climb higher up this affront to God and into a "Sky Studio"m for £235 a week (£11,985 for the year). To be clear, this is in a city where £300-a-month rents are still a thing. Zenith has a cinema, a "wellness room", a private gym with private classes, a bar on the 25th floor and a karaoke booth. If it wasn’t for the missing supermarket, you'd be living your best Ballardian life.

None of this has stopped new developments going ahead, though. "Prime" is the latest, literally sandwiched between two existing developments and due for completion in September of 2020. It comes in spite of hundreds of objections, not least because it’s being built on rare parkland: an old bowling green conveniently allowed to fall into disrepair, in a ward with very little green space.

But there's a more fundamental problem. Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency shows that combined enrolment at Cardiff's three universities has fallen year-on-year since 2014/15, by 9.2 percent overall. International students, a target market for such obscenely pricey accommodation, have fallen off even harder over this period, with a 25 percent drop in non-EU nationals. Brexit, coupled with an increasingly hostile environment for internationals , means you'd be daft to bet on these figures picking up again soon.

Cardiff council argues that developments are necessary because the number of purpose-built rooms in the city still lags far behind the number of students. How it hopes to fix the deficit with unaffordable flats is a fantastic question, but there's something else to consider, which, admittedly, nobody normally dwells on: what do the students think?

"I live in a shared house in the Cathays ward, and my rent is £340 a month," says Ben Leonard, a third year Politics student at Cardiff University. "For me, the shared house in a student neighbourhood is an essential part of the university experience, so even if I could afford to, there’s no way I'd pay to live in a tower in the city centre for the luxury of a private gym or a games room."

"I don't know any students who could afford £150-a-week rent, or who'd want a private cinema or bar," agrees Hannah Tottle, a recent Film Production graduate from the University of South Wales. "The impression I get among people I've met is that they're not too sociable either. Cardiff has a strong sense of community. This kind of accommodation pulls away from that."

It all seems like stupefying business illiteracy on the part of developers, and it's not unique to the Welsh capital. Last year there were warnings that Plymouth, where multiple student skyscrapers have been thrown up despite plummeting enrolments, could soon end up with some 2,000 empty rooms. Yet plans are still being submitted for new developments. Meanwhile, earlier this year, a nationwide scheme of 19 buildings collapsed under the management of A1 Alpha Properties, which by February had only managed to fill half its rooms. Such miserable failures have done nothing to stem the explosive growth of PBSAs in cities like Coventry and Liverpool.