Sentence:  Only a radical change in the nature of the population in the central city would be likely to destroy this preference - and we must now turn our <WSD>attention</WSD> to the question of whether such a change , gloomily foreseen by so many urban diagnosticians , is actually upon us . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  the process whereby a person concentrates on some features of the environment to the (relative) exclusion of others