SimCity has all but died as a franchise. The latter ones haven’t really caught the spirit of the early games; however, Cities Skylines is a beast of a game adding so much to the original ideas of SimCity and making for a very wholesome game.
It’s pretty much how Planet Coaster killed the Rollercoaster Tycoon franchise really. The original was the best, but the later games lost their way – especially the horrible Android abominations.
I loved SimCity, I’ve been looking for a modern interpretation for ages now but there’s nothing that comes close. I ended up downloading SimCity 2000 on my PC, it never got better than that.
Have you tried Cities Skylines? I never found anything quite right but that game presses all the right buttons.