Quarter I Project - First Deadline

My first deadline to meet for the quarter project was Friday, August 29th. To make the final due date, I figured I would have to have my city laid out in the most basic of forms.
First off, I needed to start fresh. I didn't want to jump into anything and freehand an entire project, so I took a street layout texture and put it on top of a plane.

After I had this town, I wanted to layout the actual planes that I would use as the roads so I wouldn't have to continually reference the picture above.

Of course, I didn't follow the map completely, but I needed a closed city and I don't want roads going nowhere. It still needs to be cleaned up a bit, but it's a good start.

Once I flattened everything out and lined all the streets up to look nice, I decided I could work on the very basics of all the buildings. It was a little overwhelming, but I felt I needed to start somewhere. Like I previously said, I wanted to model a few buildings after real buildings, so I started with what would be my tallest skyscraper: The Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center's main building. Below is a side by side of what I started with in comparison.

Of course, the building I'm modeling is the one in the center on the left. Of course, it needs work, but it's only a start.
After that was done (roughly), I wanted to roughly edit the other buildings to meet my first deadline. So I jumped in with some work:

This is looking like a really good skyline, so I'll throw in the towel as far as skyscrapers are involved. Every city, however, needs a few scenic buildings that aren't skyscrapers. For example, a couple barbecue joints or small HQ offices. Every city has them; it's up to the tourist to spot the best buildings in the city.

I added a few smaller buildings (stuff like bus stops, laundromats etc.) to fill out the city a bit. The below pictures are a couple different angles of my city. You'll notice a few buildings/objects are textured, but this, I assure you, is only because I wanted to distinguish a couple buildings and make sure the lighting was going to work correctly. With a city full of gray, a few objects in color give the eye a break.