Back in 2014, I lived and travelled around South East Asia, where I discovered how well one can live in places where the living costs are low. An example of this was a town in Thailand called Chiang Mai, where I paid $100 a month to rent an en-suite studio apartment (all bills included) which I shared with my ex-girlfriend.
Some of the best food to be found was street food, with meals costing around $3 for plentiful servings.
Nowadays I live in New York, probably one of the most expensive cities in the world, where we pay over $1600 per month in rent for a one bedroom flat (which is considered a good deal).
The main reason we live here is to be close to my wife’s family, but I also used to consider that part of the rational of living here was the proximity to thriving industry, networking opportunities and interesting people. I run a podcast production agency which can essentially be run from anywhere, but saw my location here as an additional competitive advantage — access to the people, networks, recording studios and platforms with which much of the best podcasting is created.
However, since the pandemic broke out, the access to these resources is not the same as it used to be. And since we’re all working remotely now by default, it makes me ask myself — is location still a competitive advantage?