Also when I was kind I wasn’t really able to build a good city. I understood years later this is because the game expects cities to be built in the US fashion: big residencial/commercial/industrial zones separated from each other, linked by roads, lot of roads. And square based layouts. That was totally different from where I lived so I’ve always found the cities layout that works in the game where very artificial. So there wasn’t too much to learn about city planning.
It...does not. It uses and underlying low-level simulation model which can be satisfied lots of different ways, but what you describe is not one that works particularly well for it.
In real life, I very much like having shops on the ground floor of residential buildings. Very convenient for me.
I played mostly Sim City 2000.
Also lincity/linticy-ng are great too, even more for a climate changing world.
