One of the biggest, most important things that the internet has done is to create a more mobile workforce. Increasingly, more business can be done, and is being done, by people with laptops connected to the world, from anyplace in the world. Bloggers, CEO’s, designers, accountants; the sky is the limit. So many valuable functions can be performed remotely that it brings up a question: doesn’t this change everything?
For many years, the search for a place to live at any stage of an adult’s working life was based largely on the job market – and job outlook – of any given location. An entire industry cropped up around determining where one should live, work, play, work, and work. Also, work.
But we don’t necessarily want to choose where to live based on work, do we? I prefer to consider the myriad other factors, and prioritize accordingly. Having to think about where to work eliminates so, so many options that freedom-loving people might otherwise explore.
Take my friend John, for example (that’s not his real name, but you see what we’re doing here). John and his beautiful wife Joanna have six kids. Now, John worked hard in school and eventually became a doctor, and he’s doing alright, but like in any family, every dollar counts. So when he got his first big break job at a hospital in Houston, he and Joanna and the three kids at the time, found a really nice home…about 75 minutes away from his job, on a good day. What are you going to do? The wild western exurbs of Houston are where John and Joanna were able to find a place that ticked the boxes.
John is doing great, important work for the people of Houston, but my heart goes out to him and his family as they deal with his rotten commute. They’d rather be here in Phoenix, close to the rest of the family, and enjoying the kind of time they had together when John was a resident at a local suburban facility.
You can do your best to pick your job, but life would really be better if we could assign priority one to, let’s say, “good schools”, and priority two to “less than two inches of annual snowfall”, and priority three to “excellent pro soccer team”… No? Just me? But you get the picture. Living where you want to live because you think that place is awesome would make life just a little better.
Since people now can choose to live where they want, irrespective of the distance to their source of income, I think we’re going to see a massive, massive shift in population trends.
Since I was a kid, I’ve heard experts bemoan the rise of the suburbs, and the 18-lane freeway, and the Starbucks on every corner, and all the problems that come along with large population centers. “Wasn’t the country better off,” they reflect, “when everyone lived on farms or in small, sustainable communities?” I always say that it depends on the person, but for the most part, I think that as long as people are where they want to be, then yeah. That would be ideal. And I think we’re on our way.
So go ahead. Start dreaming about where you would live if it was totally up to you. And then, look into a way to make it happen. If you’re stuck somewhere in the world that you don’t want to be in, and you’d just give anything to move back to that awesome little neighborhood from your youth, close to family and friends, then you can do it. If you’re in a small town that you love, and you’re thinking you’ll have to move to a bigger city in order to make ends meet, think again.
I’ll expand on this subject as time goes on. The freedom to choose one’s community is a game changer, and the more that people exercise that freedom, I think the better off we’ll all be.