I used to do rotational play in TS2. There, I'd start a new, completely empty, neighborhood, move in a single sim, who would romance a passing townie, have kids, those kids would eventually go to university and move into their own houses, and I'd play each house for a week, in order, eventually filling the neighborhood.
I haven't done it in TS4. The only way I could see doing it would be to turn off aging on all houses but the active one, not use MCCC for story progression, and just accept that a lot of sims in the neighborhoods are going to be functionally immortal.