They can also be really cheap. I have a hostel up here and the cheapest room is $61. That had just enough room for the bed and a bare bulb. The ventilation shaft running along the top may have upped the price-not sure. A hostel is just a room with facilities like bathrooms in common areas. Another way to make a place cheap is to use lots of solar panels.

The layout of a town/city in reality will depend on how it started. If the layout was done by a municipality or a group of people planning on starting a town, and I will say more artifically, it will be more blocky, with shops in the center and houses around that. Those types of layouts are often here where towns, which later evolve into cities, were built after gold or something was discovered.

If it started naturally, when people still moving around trading or looking for water/feed for cattle, it will be far more linear - homes would be next to a river, or in a valley because there is a water source and it is not needed to go over the mountains again. They would have lived as close as possible to the river in order to be near the water.

If you lay out your hood as a city planner, it ought look different from one that is a settlement of Sims landing in an empty hood which they have to develop themselves. The city planner will have choices and resources, and can build the city any way she or he likes to, since there will be money for development. Shopping areas should probably still be within easy reach of richer residents, but also far enough so that they don't sleep next to the all night shops. The poor people will probably have to stay close to the shops (or even between them and put up with the noise).

In a settlement, they will have to be close to the water source and build from there.

Of course, there are no rules for how anyone builds a hood Just have fun.