I live in Amsterdam; nobody wants to live in the city center. There are plenty of ways to keep an old city center AND build out the surrounding areas in a way that people actually would like to live there.

We do really need to have a serious conversation about single-family homes; you will even find them right next to metro stations. Some of these low-density neighborhoods really need to be demolished and reconstructed into higher-density housing that can still reasonably house a family.

That's a fair point, maybe "city center" isn't the best term here. What I mean are areas still in the city close to where a lot of the cafes, bars, restaurants, nightlife - third places in general - are, which is where people that want to live in a city generally prefer to live in if possible.