Interesting article. I was interested in views on the newer simcities and found these articles interesting:

http://planyourcity.net/2013/09/20/sim-city-through-the-eyes...

- this city planer concludes that there are a lot of options and the mechanics are interesting but it oversimplifies things and gives the player god-like powers

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681515/using-the-new-sim-city-6-...

-this was a "tournament" between various urban think tanks and journalists and points out how all of them took the short term benefits with casinos, oil and sewage over sustainable livable cities that they advocate.

http://todigra.org/index.php/todigra/article/view/31/36 - this a scientific article compares the rules in Simcity Societies to the work of controversial urban theorist Richard Florida