This one was a bit easier to start than my first city.
But basically I started on the penisula and built it out to the maximum then let it spill over onto the larger side. Except on the penisula (which is the older original city) the highways where built along with part of the monorail system BEFORE the development.
In regards to the look, I used a lot of medium and low residential, and used minimal amounts of large high density plots, espcially for commercial.