I'm not sure how that affects my prediction, one way or another.
Edited to add: a table with actual data. The 2000s have not been kind to most cities. By comparison, the USA as a whole grew 9.7% from 2000 to 2010.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-04-07-1Aciti...
For example, Boston is growing at a decent rate. Boston however has a tremendous education, health care, biotech/pharma, finance and high-tech industries. Boston crime is also at all-time lows. However, small cities in Massachusetts such as New Bedford, Fall River, Worcester, and Lowell are continuing to see people move out -- usually towards Boston, but also towards smaller suburbs that are continuing to grow. Actually, Boston bedroom communities aren't exactly hurting, as they're pretty decent at attracting lots of good jobs on their own (particularly the 128 corridor).
A great contrast is Philadelphia versus Pittsburgh. Although within the same state, they're still 300 miles apart and the differences in their industries and crime do much to determine how their populations are growing and falling respectively.
Worcester is at a cross-roads now. It has excellent proximity to Boston and Providence. It has a strong bio-medical industry as well as three highly regarded universities (Holy Cross, WPI, and Clark) as well as several smaller, less known ones. Several major hospitals too. If Massachusetts can sort out the commuter rail situation and cut travel time down to <45min between Worcester and Boston then it could really take off as an alternative to Boston for people with families and on budgets.
It does have its issues. Certain neighborhoods are giant crime-pits (Main South, Vernon Hill etc.) On the other hand it has an extremely safe, pleasant west-side with some pockets of high-affluence. East and North Worcester range from OK to good. It's a very spread out city despite having 180K people living in it which unfortunately means cars are a must.
It's all going to be about transportation. Commuter rail to Boston will improve, part of the deal to allow CSX to expand its freight yard in Worcester was to add 10 - 20 more trains to Worcester between now and 2020. The Pike bypasses Worcester but since the completion of the 146 connector that has stopped being a real issue. If those things occur, and it is a big-if, expect the urban-downtown area of Worcester to boom as it's a small downtown area and it will be important to tightly pack around the train station because of the lack of transportation around the rest of the city.
A lot of the oil companies are starting to move out of downtown. Exxon as always been up in The Woodlands, ConocoPhilips is out at Highway 6 and I-10. Shell is moving a lot of people out to their west Houston facility and BP recently opened a huge new expansion to their campus in the same area.
Now, urban Houston, which I would say is anything inside the 610 loop, still grew by a large percent though I'm not exactly sure what that is.
I'd also argue that there's never been a better time to live in Houston. Growing tech sector, amazing healthcare sector with some of the best hospitals and research institutions in the world. Also a food scene which is possibly the most interesting and innovative in the nation right now.