Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities?
LOL it is the other way around, cities become most expensive because developers flock there and spend cash.This happens now in Limassol, Cyprus: crowds of developers, most having their own startups, started to flock there since 3 years ago from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine - it was always a country to keep offshore companies/accounts, so every rich developer in ex-USSR already been there and knew the place, but since 2014 it started to make sense to move physically as well - in Russia people escape propaganda and mass chauvinist hysteria, in Belarus economic crisis prompted government to jail IT business people to milk them on their money (then frequently releasing with no right to leave the country - in order to make them earn more, then milk again), in Ukraine they are simply leaving the unrest and crumbling infrastructure.Since about last year it became a virtuous cycle because developers started to move in simply because it's a place with many developers already so it's easy to exchange ideas, and then investment funds joined. We are witnessing a small Silicon Valley in the making (of course, with probable limits of about a few percent of the real Valley). It already made Limassol a much more expensive place, rents on cheap apartments almost doubled in 3 years.Developers want to be where developers are, and VCs want to be where there are many developers, and then more developers come where VCs are... and you get another 'most expensive city'.