Tips or advice for making first city?

[Doing My Best]

I was a little overwhelmed when I first booted up my new game, like not quite sure how to start out tbh. This game clearly gives you all the tools right out the gate and is very freeform, which I appreciate, but I am a smoothbrain who sucks at this genre lol. The graphics really drew me in so I want to try to make something cool in this.

Can someone give me some idea of what to place down first, or maybe a good road layout to branch out from? My first city just looked like a crappy single road with all the prefabs lined up one-each. And it looked bad. Real bad.

[['0] BEZZA]

id suggest creating residential first then moving adding corner shops, etc etc, grow ur city, gentrify ur commercial/residential etc

[Allisonlj]

I tried to recreate a scale version of my tiny hometown, like just enough homes to make the proportions look okay compared to the amount of shops down the other roads. I havent been to my hometown now in over 20 years so it was kinda neat going wait no i forgot the pet store was before the blockbuster and had to change color schemes around.

Not sure when i'll play again to be honest i too would like a little more direction too but i have a good idea if you don't have a tiny hometown--well 2 ideas.

Recreate your neighborhood.

Go on google maps, zoom out a bit, look for the most remote tiny town you can find in a state you know nothing about, then zoom in and turn on the satellite layer or switch to google street view and wander around town. Recreate that. Or, pick a new tiny town somewhere else, most tiny towns are kinda ick, but theres some real charmers!