God it's depressing that people believe this is the true nature of downtowns:

"Without commuting office workers, the office buildings go empty, they become worth a fraction of their cost, and retail cannot survive."

From https://innovationnation.blog/p/its-companies-fault-we-dont-want

Cities predate commutes. The hollowed out core that triples in population, swelled to bursting with bored and unhappy suburbanites during work hours, is a modern abomination made possible by cars and structural racism.

What's killing downtowns is that we spent so long on this awful vision of work and spent half a century strangling inner city infrastructure to subsidize incredibly expensive suburban lifestyles.

Want to make downtowns viable again? Convert dead office space to apartments and schools and colleges and other spaces people can work *and* live in.

Good luck with your rezoning applications though.