With the changes in 0.264 city building got even worse.

Now you can't build stuff out, till the one building you're building is built.

I.e. X O O O

where X is an existing building and O is a planned building isn't possible anymore. You can only build

X O

thus making it necessary to build one building after each other, visiting a city each time something got build to select the next building.

I think though this is only a temporary change, since it is incredible frustrating, and I hope we will soon see a new system for city building and resource connections.

So basically undo the stretched houses syndrome with auto-roading?  I think that's the obvious aesthetic solution.

I like the organic growth, sim-city ideas as well. Its a lot less artificial than a purely tile-laying method of city growth.  Also agree that growth limited to one building per turn is too artificial, though that's pretty standard for turn-based games. Espcially liking Cuddlelump's ideas.