platform Nestpick.
Melbourne scored highly on livability factors such as safety, health care, culture and leisure activities, as well as its remote working infrastructure.
It was also just one of 10 cities in Nestpick’s rankings to offer a “digital nomad” visa — a specific visa or equivalent document allowing self-employed and foreign-employed remote workers to enter and work in the country. The others were: Zagreb, Prague, Lisbon, Reykjavik, Tallinn, Athens, Sydney, Dubai and Mexico City.
Nestpick’s study comprised of 75 global cities, which the platform chose based on the locations that were often cited as the “most livable” destinations.
The cities were then scored across three broad categories — costs and infrastructure, legislation and freedoms, and livability. In terms of costs and infrastructure, for instance, this included an analysis of the price and availability of adequate home office space.
In the case of Melbourne, the average rent for an apartment per bedroom was 681 euros ($807) per month. San Francisco, U.S. had the highest home office room rent cost at 1,736 euros per month, while Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was found to have the cheapest average rent at 119 euros per month.
In addition, Nestpick also took note of the percentage of each city’s population that are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 as an indication of governments’ response to the ongoing health crisis.
Omer Kucukdere, CEO of Nestpick, said that the coronavirus pandemic had prompted many people to reassess their personal priorities, revealing the benefits of remote working flexibility and provoking the question: “Is it really possible to work from anywhere?”
Kucukdere also noted that the pandemic had caused high-earners to leave “business-focused cities to live in places that offer better day-to-day lifestyles, taking their purchasing power with them.”
