The problem with city building games is that they are far too gamified. In reality construction takes years, even decades for many infrastructure projects. Because of that, the challenge of solving the problems of 25 years in the future is not well represented in many such games.
They also make a lot of assumptions about how cities are designed. The first thing I noticed when I started up Simcity 4 again this week for the first time in 20 years is that it's all single-use zoning. The rest of the world outside the US says hello.
Try Workers & Resources, it's more about managing a whole supply chain and being self sufficient than spending money. You can tackle it at different levels but at the most complex you're making the cement then trucking it to the building site.
