I cheat. I'm not afraid to admit it haha. I use the money tree and usually have it run for 2 months which will give me 8.5 billion or trillion (i never counted the numbers ) simoleons. I usually do highways first, since they are the hardest to put in. I never use the monorail or elevated rail since it is so flipping picky and takes up unnecessary space. I then put in avenues and then streets. I usually do things in a grid pattern with a subway station in one or two corners of each grid unit. I also have a mod that increases demand for residential/commercial/industrial (but i usually only enable it for the first city in a new region). I don't find myself using industrial zoning very much and I always raise the taxes to 20% for dirty industry, I also use the cheat "you don't deserve it" and plop in the large water pumps (200k gal.) and the microwave power plant with a few assorted windmills here and there. I lay out all the pipes, also in a grid pattern. For trash I use the PEG Garbage Chute. I then put in mostly High density zones of commercial and residential.
However, I find that when you have a river separating the city, it is very difficult to get the two sides to develop the same.I have yet to figure out how to overcome this, but I'm sure there is a way. I rarely use tunnels, and actually forgot there were tunnels until today lol. I usually play on a flat city plain and have never attempted to play a mountainous region. I am BIG on city beautification. In the newest city I'm working on, I have 1500+ small parks. I usually put large "central" parks in areas because I find they up the property values and make bigger buildings come along.
An example of my city building style:
