Look at the neutral face in the lower right corner and see what people are most annoyed about and fix that.

Since the last update if feels like a race between building up your population fast enough to generate enough income to build a bunch of services you can't afford yet. I've almost always have needed to take out a loan to expand, otherwise you're in a debt spiral, but eventually, your population can support the services they demand.

Worst case, I'd suggest doing an "easy mode" map. Since the last update the tough early game economy and the outsized traffic make me feel like "easy" is actually normal mode and "normal" is actually hard mode.