What's the Best Way to Earn Money and Grow My City Strategically?
So apparently the quickest way to earn money is to grow your population by building and improving Buildings. However, increased population obviously means increased demand for services. It seems there is a disproportionate difference between the amount of money one can earn and the amount of money it takes to buy improvements.
For example, I'm level 11. I'd like to invest in transit for my citizens rather than building wider roads all the time, but the Department of Transportation building is 40,000 Simoleons. It's a slow process to earn that much when you're selling 5 Seeds at a time at 30 Simoleons a pop.
Then, if you do improve your buildings so you can increase your taxes and you hit a new level, you might be suddenly slammed with a new responsibility, like suddenly having to buy police stations to cover your entire city. I don't even know how much that costs, but I'm afraid to even try to level up without having some cash reserves.
Does anybody have any advice for how to earn money without investing in building improvements? Does anyone have good advice for growing my city strategically, so I don't get surprised with sudden inability to meet demands of water, power, new responsibilities like Police stations, etc.?