I received the game via Humble Bundle and made a city. All I'm using is Vanilla with After Dark DLC. No mods.
The first died a miserable death of bad health (It showed polluted water is not that good for drinking...)
After about 24h playing the second city has now about 110k inhabitants and keeps growing.
I guess most of you know the map.
View from top:
The first dictricts were Briar Rose Park, Myrtle District and King Heights. The city then grew to fill most parts of the east bank of the river before I went to the west side. The oil fields beneath Pleasant Hights, Orchard Prak and Summit Park are all depleted and the oil industry was replaced by forestry (amazing how fast that pollution was removed).
Remaining ground pollution is at 2%. The polluted areas are landfills/incineration plants and the first indutrial district of King Heights.
The original farming distric of Grove Park was replaced by hotels (tourism district).
In the bottom right (not in picture) are an Intertnational Airport and some harbors as well as all water treatment plants. I accidantly drained the river several times (including reversing the stream) because of too many water pumps. That's why I now have lots of water towers north of Empire District. The main train line (along the central highway) has now two tracks. The train traffic was immense and almost collapsed before I made that addition.
Traffic flow is at about 70%, I have 90 bus, 17 metro and 1 train line (that one was sowewhat tricky - the central main station in Primose District doesn't seem to accept lines so I built one line which is now a ring aroung the city. Stations in Barlow Square, Laurel Hills, Briar Rose Hills and Sunset District/Evergreen Park).
With some better planning some parts of the city could work better but it's my first functioning city, crime is low (5%), health is high (83%), unemplyoment could be better (12%), though, and I'm happy how most of it worked out. All unlocked unique buildings (mainly the ones requiring bad managament are still locked) are there somewhere and I launched two rockets.