How Digital Nomads Reshaped Cities Around the World - Slashdot

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"They bring luxury workspaces, fancy coffee shops... and rising rents," reports Rest of World.org, visiting a coworking space with 70 people in its cafe and 100 more in its second-floor coworking area, that "looks as if it were picked up in Silicon Valley and dropped into Colombia by a crane... Coders and digital marketers crowd the tables, drinking pour-over coffee and enjoying loaded avocado toast. Downstairs, in the coffee shop, a stylish woman with a ring light on her laptop chats with a client thousands of kilometers away. Upstairs, in the dedicated office space, an American wearing an Oculus Rift headset attends a meeting in the metaverse. Most of the workers here are employed in the U.S., but relaxed post-pandemic office norms permit them to work from anywhere. This is the mobile, location-independent lifestyle of the digital nomad...

[The Colombian city] Medellín is one of the latest hot spots to join a global nomad circuit that spans tropical latitudes. Southeast Asia remains the preferred destination for nomads — on popular website Nomad List, four of the top 10 cities are from the region. The list also features less-expensive European cities in Portugal and Romania, as well as Latin American destinations like Mexico City, which share time zones with the U.S. The typical nomad might visit 12 or 13 countries in a year, all the while holding down a corporate job, usually in the tech sector...

But the income differential between the nomads and the Colombian professional class is immense. The result is runaway price inflation — rents in Laureles have skyrocketed, and restaurants cannot raise their prices fast enough. A one-bedroom in Medellín now rents for the "gringo price" of about $1,300 a month, in a country where the median monthly income is $300.

A digital nomad community "can distort the local economy," the article points out

• In Mexico city this November, people "took to the streets...to protest gentrification and rising rents."
• Portugal "curtailed licenses for Airbnbs in an attempt to calm rising housing costs."

Right now the top six four cities are Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Mexico City, and Canggu (in Bali), according to the article.

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