New growth cities have a supreme advantage here, because they can redistribute prior growth strategies into their current growth models. The faster these newer cities are currently growing the less they will be disrupted by loyalty to prior growth patterns. Older cities are doomed to empty at their cores unless they have something unique and specific that is cause for perseverance. There is no illusion to any of this. Wishful thinking and nostalgia won't fix it.

Its just economics. The answers to over coming economic disruption are always the same: be where you are not expected or do that which others cannot.