something I don’t see people bring up a lot when talking about worldbuilding, especially when you’re creating cities, is wind. prevailing winds in many places in the northern hemisphere blow from west -> east, and because industrial production tended to take place in the centre of cities, workers would live downwind of factories while the wealthier classes would live on the other side, away from air pollutants, which is why a lot of cities have a poor east-end and a rich west-end, a spatial configuration that persists in many places that are now post-industrial
and in general the built environment has a durability to it that persists far past the historical moments that produce those configurations. this means that the stated aims of a city via a vis city planning are frequently at odds with the physical layout of the city itself. so if you want to create a city that feels like it has a long history to it, working through its earlier stages of production can help with decisions you make about its layout, and also allow for weird spatial contradictions in a city that has to constantly fight against its own physical history