The Wall Street Journal is out with a report that downtown areas are reinventing themselves; they may have fewer office workers, but thriving neighborhoods.  The paper used St. Louis, MO as an example.

"As offices sit empty, shops and restaurants close and abandoned buildings become voids that suck the life out of the streets around them. Locals often find boarded-up buildings depressing and empty sidewalks scary. So even fewer people commute downtown...St. Louis’s central business district had the steepest drop in foot traffic of 66 major North American cities between the start of the pandemic and last summer, according to the University of Toronto’s School of Cities. Traffic has improved some in the past 12 months, but at a slower rate than many Midwestern cities.”

The article pointed out that "the pandemic has shifted the urban center of gravity, moving away from often sterile office districts to neighborhoods with apartments, bars and restaurants. 

“We’re now back to what cities really are—they’re not containers for working,” said Richard Florida, a specialist in city planning at the University of Toronto. “They’re places for people to live and connect with others.”

Andrea Loscalzo, owner of the Italian restaurant Salumeria Rosi in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, said his eatery is as busy as before the pandemic. Many regulars left the neighborhood and never returned, but young professionals in their 30s and 40s moved in to replace them, he said.