I'm a bit different from the poll options, since I DO want to see the city enhancement stuff - I just don't want to do it myself.
I want there to be a mayor; I want him to be a person in the game; I'd even be willing to let the player stand for election. But I don't want the player to be pushed into politics, and I think he should be barred from being the mayor if he's running a company.
What I'd rather see is individual city governments becoming a type of company. The City Hall would become an interface for this, like like corporate headquarters. The City Hall would contain 9 modules, each governing different aspects of the city, as follows:
Revenue Service: Effects tax rate in the city, which gives the government money based on population. Reduces GDP.
Environmental Office: Effects taxes on resource gathering ops.
Labour office: Sets minimum wages and working hours for factories (minimum wage sets labour cost, working hours sets manufacturing efficiency).
Permit office: Sets tax on retail businesses.
Social Security: Sets unemployment benefit. Uses government money based on the unemployment rate; improves GDP within the city.
Housing office: Sets development subsidies. Government covers X% of the cost of land in the city.
Transport office: Sets transport tax in the city. Freight cost is (current caculation)*(current calc * transport tax).
Health Office: Spends government money improving the life expectancy/ QOL in the city.
Customs office: Sets tariff rates. Any goods being imported into a city must pay tariffs (can be set negative to subsidize imports).
The player must appoint ministers to fill these posts; each minister has his own agenda determined by his personality and so will adjust policies to his own likes or dislikes. People will refuse posts if their personality is too far from your policy (see below). Ministers MAY run corporations in addition to their government posts, they also receive a small salary (60k+inflation per minister). The government is permitted to build any buildings a corporation might, but the buildings belong to the city, so if you're voted out of power then the new government inherits them. The government also pays for and owns all the civic buildings.
Low population taxes, low unemployment, high wages, good QoL and good unemployment subsidies will cause cities to grow in population. This increases the number of tax payers, and increases the number of people who have to be housed etc.
There would also be Campaign Headquarters, for players/AIs who went the political route rather than the economic route. This would have fewer options, but you'd be wanting to build more than one of each.
Fundraising: The main means by which the political party earns cash. This earns money from the general population, based on your political party's brand.
Advertising: Increases political brand.
Corporate relations: Allows you to contact corporations to ask for funds. Corporations will offer money based on how close to the CEO's personality your policies are, and how popular your party is - so it's hard to get big cash payouts if you're relatively unknown.
Policy Office: The important one. Here, you set the agenda of your party. This will make you popular with people who are similarly inclined. This is effectively the product of politics; the policy office can be set to any issue (so taxation, environment, labour etc) and will provide a personality bar for that issue. This can then be set to the 'right' place on that bar by the player. Note that this means a party will need multiple offices to have an opinion on all issues AND have other aspects (like fundraising, advertising etc).
When in power, failing to live up to your promises will hurt your party's popularity; poor economic performance will hurt your popularity; high unemployment or housing supply will hurt your popularity, running a deficit will hurt your popularity. The population of each city is also given a shifting personality of it's own - so Winnipeg can become more environmentalist as time progresses, and so grow more favourable to Green parties.
This would present the player as CEO with a new set of tactical choices,
even if he's not playing the political game himself. While I may not be interested in standing for mayor, or interested in running a department, everything the government does could have an impact on me, and so I'm damned well going to contribute money to the party who wants to lower my taxes and legalise child labour. Maybe I'm a retail business; I don't much care if natural resources are taxed or if the government is electing to set up manufacturing firms, so I'm happy to contribute money to the party which wants to set those up as long as they're willing to make my shop licenses cheaper. Maybe I'm a real estate man; I want to see high development subsidies and good population growth but to hell with all those production firms.
Anyway, that's the direction I'd want to see in the city simulation game taking. I don't want to be playing Sim City, but I do want one of the other characters in the game to be doing so