I think it's a hold-over from the age of factories and paper offices, when people had to be in one place to do the work. White collar work can now be mostly distributed, but light and heavy industry still needs groups of people working on site. Very different locations though, you don't see much manufacturing happening downtown.
I trace my American heritage to the Midwest and have plenty of industrial electricians, iron workers, farmers, etc in the family line. Traveling around the big Midwestern cities, there’s a part of me that longs for the old industrial downtown. Loud with machines, busy on the streets with laborers, dirty and dynamic. Now? It’s mostly cars, a few pedestrians, and a bunch of people who barely leave their desks (me included). Plenty of reasons why the times now are better, but there is some kind of a loss there.
