Most of this is anecdotal, so forgive (and correct me) if I am off-base here:
I hate to say it, but I doubt those towers would have done anything to heal Hartford. Would they have been built on empty lots, or would more of the city been taken down for them to be built? My girlfriend grew up outside Hartford, and in my brief visits to it or passing through on the highway, it strikes me almost as a place where every since-discredited urban planning theory was tried. It's especially sad to see how beautiful and whole it once was. Even as so many American cities are making a comeback, Hartford seems unfortunate in how far it must come and how reluctant those around it might be to help in that endeavor.
I grew up outside Manchester, New Hampshire (another city that once saw a huge amount of its urban fabric decimated) and whenever I am home the natural destination for going out is downtown Manchester. I was surprised to find that the same is not true of Hartford--it is a shell of a city, a loose forest of towers in a vast parking lot with the indignity of raised walkways so people don't have to interact with the street, but the biggest impediment seems to be that those who live outside the city (and may or may not work downtown) have so little invested in Hartford. Unlike Manchester or Portland, where even those who live outside the city use and frequent its amenities, Hartford seems like it is treated more like a suburban office park than a city by those in the surrounding communities. People may work downtown, but they don't seem to go out there or ever consider moving there. West Hartford Center is a very nice place, but this seems only to hurt Hartford more--with safe, relatively homogenous, affluent neighborhoods and downtowns outside the city, there's little incentive to invest much in improving Hartford.
