Silicon Valley was admittedly relatively pricey even by the late eighties. I turned down at least one job in that timeframe because of the CoL difference and I lived in Massachusetts which wasn't extraordinarily cheap.

But there certainly have been rapid changes, especially in some currently popular cities. For example, I believe Boton was still losing population in the 1990s and, at one point, when Teradyne moved out that was pretty much the last tech company in the city (including Cambridge) leaving. There may have been some early biotech but pretty much none of the Route 128 computer companies were in the city.

New York City was also in pretty dire straights in the latter part of the eighties.