I understand the point you're making, but two things are still just horribly broken:

1) Pathing. Once you reach a certain city size, there's not much you can do that helps resolve this issue.

2) Numbers don't add up. Again, once you reach a certain city size, you can't keep services in line with your population.

No matter how much else I may love about the game, these make it a broken experience for me.