It's also that the west collectively convinced themselves that the economy could be built on high value knowledge work and services and manufacturing will be handled by someone else. Of course people would rather live near some offices, or maybe a workshop than a heavy industrial site...

The transition of my country from a socialist to a western capitalist system included a mass closure of heavy industry and what remains is dying a slow death of high energy costs. I remember when a coal mine closed there were all those marvelous ideas how the area would transition to high tech programming jobs; the thing that actually saved the area was a fuse manufacturing plant.