Out of curiosity, do you have a personal connection to the town? > It will take many decades before most shops/amenities/people have moved to the new city, and

Out of curiosity, do you have a personal connection to the town? > It will take many decades before most shops/amenities/people have moved to the new city, and in the transitional period both the old and new will be bad. Who wants to be the first shop-owner to move to the new, almost empty city? I don't doubt that there's going to be pain. When I briefly visited the town some time ago, though, it seemed to me like the larger stores were maybe a couple of kilometers from the town center anyway. I'm not sure a couple of kilometers will stop people from going into those. A smaller shop might of course be more in a pinch for a while, as could a pub or a restaurant. Of course someone with a personal take would probably know better. What interests me perhaps even more is the personal attachment people might have to the existing neighbourhoods, buildings and locations, and the non-financial loss of those, as you said. The town did seem to have some kind of an atmosphere of its own, although that could of course be entirely in my mind, not in those of the people actually living there.