Band 7+: Accommodation and transport problems are increasing in many large cities. Businesses are encouraged to move to rural areas. Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

Owing to the increasing severity of transport and housing issues in a large number of metropolitan areas, businesses are advised to move to more remote regions. I strongly believe that the benefits of moving away from cities would be more significant compared to the potential problems.

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On the one hand, the suggestion that businesses should move their operations away from cities is beneficial for their employees. In urban regions, the population density is extremely high since people often migrate to these areas for job and education opportunities, causing high housing demands and significant traffic volume. These eventually lead to a higher accommodation cost along with more traffic congestions, especially in rush hours. As a result, when businesses move away to remote areas where houses are cheaper and the traffic density is lower, workers can save a lot of cost of living while experiencing much more limited time and money waste from vehicular congestion. On the other hand, moving away from cities may bring about many challenges for employers. First and foremost, large cities are often economic hubs that grant access to a wide variety of necessary ingredients and resources for production. Thus, when businesses move to rural areas, the logistical nature of their operations would be impaired, increasing the cost of production and making them lose the competitive edge against other competitors. Furthermore, services in cities that are catered to serving business employees would suddenly lose a large portion of customers, affecting their livelihood significantly and hampering urban economic development.

In conclusion, I believe that there are more benefits when businesses, especially conglomerates, move their operations away from cities. Not only can this measure decrease the cost of living, but it may also limit time waste due to congestion. Although there are some risks that employers and service providers should be aware of, the most important mission is to alleviate the housing crisis and traffic issue that many cities are experiencing.