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It's more likely that Knuth remained in Si Va after his retirement because he didn't want to sell the house, buy another house somewhere else, make a new set of friends and learn to get around a new city, rather than his making some list of places he could be living, then picking Si Va from that list.

"Tech", as the article uses it, tend to be less Donald Knuth and more Woody Allen in the sense that "80 percent of life is showing up". The "best of the best" is mostly busy being the best. Cities usually fail to attract talent because there aren't enough substance to their claims and they therefor can't get people to show up.

Cities don't fail to attract talent at all.

> For example, Donald Knuth lives in Silicon Valley,

Maybe because he works in Stanford, which is in the heart of Silicon Valley? And he's been a faculty there for 40+ years, so he probably could afford a house there. AND Stanford has a program where you can lease a house on campus? Lots of reasons, all containing the word "Stanford" :)