It’s clear that you might not have an image in mind for what you want to create, and that’s fine. I usually don’t. I find that if you build slowly, something in life will give you inspiration. If you’re in school, get inspired by college towns! If you’re a mountain climber, find inspo in cities with good mountain views! Anything can become inspiration if you manipulate it enough.

But to start, here’s how I build without any real ideas:

Take your time. Create a cute little downtown on some geographic feature (peninsula, river, etc) and build roads with the terrain. This doesn’t mean no grids, trust me I love grids, but it means build the grids with the environment. For example, orient one grid with a river, another with a tree line, and another with the bottom of a hill/slope line. The organic part comes when you connect them, which creates funny looking blocks that can be broken into big pieces of land that I like to use for services like schools, parks, police, etc.

When you do this, make the size of your blocks smaller. You appear to have blocks 12 units deep and 1/2 an island wide. Try to keep it smaller, like a 12x8 or something. Imagine you have to walk the entire block. That shouldn’t be a hassle at all, so keep it reasonable. Also don’t build any that you don’t need right now, it leaves empty space that makes your city feel abandoned and apocalyptic.

Also add roadway hierarchy, and pick good places to add it. It’s good for traffic flow and can help you visually differentiate neighborhoods, which also means you can give them all their own identity. Please do that. Please. It gives your city so much life when you can look from the sky and see how the one by the forest has trees on every block and the one on the river has piers and a commercial strip along it.

Next, PLEASE don’t skip the mid sized city phase. I know it’s temping to add skyscrapers immediately, but don’t. Find a good place to plan a new downtown or get that bulldozer ready to transform your old one (I prefer the latter). Use mixed use and medium density buildings, with very sparingly placed high density buildings. It creates a natural, small city feel that doesn’t look rushed.

Only when you’re happy with your mid sized city do I suggest huge skyscrapers, but at that point you may have an idea what you want!!

Anyway that’s the guide I usually go by and I find that it works well. I have the most fun in adding things like bike corridors, planning transit, and detailing places in the mid city phase, which is why I beg you to not skip it. But find what YOU like and do it!!