It may look pretty sterile but damn will it be easy to manage. Traffic won't get out of control and your city will prosper. A good grid system with few stop lights on avenues, one ways and major mass transit system is easy to build and better yet easy to plan out. Diagonal roads will mess up your placement and make it harder to build a coherent city.
You will lose big bucks for awhile but once the city takes off you will have the infrastructure in place to handle lots of people trying to get to work.
From day one of your city sink big bucks into subways and bus systems even if they have few riders. Along these lines the above advice works best if you have a major mass transit network.Normal roads will become highly congested once you get away from the avenues so instead make them one ways and place them in a circular fashion so that traffic can flow in and out. Use one way roads to connect the areas between your avenues. For long stretches only connect one or two roads into the ave (don't forget to connect BOTH lanes or else only one side of the road will have access).
Avenues are the arteries of your city and can carry lots of traffic, by connecting roads or streets to them you are adding stoplights that slow down traffic. When building a city with Avenues do not connect many roads to them.
