The end of the article raises a point that makes me wonder: that perhaps cities have put the cart before the horse and that people didn't go to the city center but, rather, that the city center was the place where people hung out. And with third-places in life support people have no reason to go to the city center anymore.
Death of the city happened after death of the third place. In between were the consequences of white flight made possible from suburbanization.
Remove cars, let people have a pint in the sun. The vast majority of the failure of the city is that we’ve moved so far away from what a city is, instinctually, that we don’t notice that they are entirely unpleasant places to be now.
We've build our urban centers as places that prioritize cars over people, and we're suddenly confused as to why people don't want to spend time in them.