Announce to your friends and family that you’re choosing to live in your vehicle and you’re likely to raise some concern.

The 2017 book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century” by Jessica Bruder – made into the 2020 film starring Frances McDormand – drew attention to the hundreds of thousands of Americans living itinerant lifestyles due to poverty and insecure employment.

But not everyone choosing to live in a van is doing so out of desperation.

Technology and changing workplace norms have helped make the option of trading an office cubicle for a rotating vista of beachfront and desert sunsets an attractive option for the affluent.

This attraction has been amplified by the power of social media, with an entire movement evolving around the hashtag #vanlife.

To be part of the movement, any old grey-nomad style camper will not do.

Explore #vanlife on social media and you’ll discover glamorous adult cubby houses on wheels fitted with Scandinavian-inspired kitchens, parquet wood flooring, and linen bed sheets with matching throw cushions.

It’s not all nomadland: how #vanlife made mobile living a middle-class aspiration