I agree that they have a lot of things to improve, yet I'd argue that Cities: Skylines is the best city simulation so far (disclaimer: I loved SC3000, I hated SC4 and 2013). But maybe I'll change my mind, I'm playing Skylines just to relax once in a while so I haven't had a chance to hate it yet ;).
One thing that's great is the community (and Colossal/Paradox attitude towards people that mod the game). The game is pretty new and there is already tons of different mods, it'll be interesting to watch how this evolves over time. So, you say that you don't like Chirpy - you may be interested in this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=40579... (fun name, isn't it?). AFAIK, there are already multiple communities that build mods, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylinesModding
I was of a mixed mind with SimCity 4; there were certain things about it that were much better and other things not so much.
I enjoyed the Rush Hour expansion more than the original SC4. One thing that SC4 did extremely well though was music and general presentation, although I'll admit to missing much of the original composer's music for SimCity 3000/2000.
SimCity 2000 had a lot of great mechanics but a fairly terrible interface -- somewhat understandable given its original incarnation as a dos game and certain UI mechanics hadn't come along yet (such as being able to use the scroll wheel or panning around).
But I'll always fondly remember when I upgraded to a SoundBlaster AWE32 just so I could get "real midi" music from SimCity 2000 :-)
One thing that's great is the community (and Colossal/Paradox attitude towards people that mod the game). The game is pretty new and there is already tons of different mods, it'll be interesting to watch how this evolves over time. So, you say that you don't like Chirpy - you may be interested in this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=40579... (fun name, isn't it?). AFAIK, there are already multiple communities that build mods, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylinesModding