I wouldn't say the new expansion is "stupid". Right now we've only seen a small glimpse of what's going to be in it so there's no need to put off building a city. At the moment, I've been working busily on my three cities I've created since I got the game. They're in different states of being bad to worse because of the learning curve. As much as I've gone and started new cities, I still go back to these.
City building, keep in mind, doesn't happen instantly. Our changes cause other things to happen in the city which are not apparent. Add in some more housing, there's an increase in population. Put a water pump in the industrial area, and oops! Now we've got a major death wave on our hands because of the sick CIMs. The water pump issue, didn't happen right away either, it takes time for the pollution to make its way through the water supply, and some time to clean up completely. In the meantime, we now have increased sickness followed by an increase in dead along with a big drop in population which takes time to recover.
Then there's building in general. Build slowly and plan carefully. As you gain experience, you'll learn what not to do and even predict an outcome due to a design you've implemented.
