Another, more sustainable, option is to make it more pleasant to live in downtown areas. NYC probably doesn’t have this issue as much as others, but plenty of smaller cities were completely dead on the weekends because few actually live downtown. It’s way more sustainable to have neighborhoods built on many small businesses and hundreds of families. If a small business shuts down or someone moves out, it doesn’t have a huge impact on the overall neighborhood. Compare to huge businesses employing thousands. If they move, it is obviously devastating to the local economy because this one entity was the bedrock of the town. (Especially a thing in lots of smaller towns and cities!)

NYC doesn’t have that problem maybe, but many cities will have to deal with this shift, and the solution isn’t to be regressive but to start finding new ways to make these places vibrant.