Sim City 4

[Monk]

Yeah, use that one too, except start with only allowing small housing. If you jump straight to scrapers, then your pop. growth dries up. Spread out, then up always worked for me in grid cities.
As for having ajoining squares having the industry/business is the way to go. One of the huge squares for residential, with small/med squares all around for the industry. Miss out on some of the rewards doing it that way though.

Yeah...I keep my cities fairly mixed though each one is usually dedicated to a certain purpose. For example, I fill all the tiles on the map with farmland with small backwater towns in them. I destroy farming as I grow some cities while others never change. Also, building large tracts of suburbs presents nice transportation challenges. Eventually, the cities that have grown up near the center of everything usually get overrun by high end commercial and a few residential high rises and suburban and industrial cities dotting the area around. So fun!