I'm with you that vector has many advantages (no pixellation at any zoom and export to pdf being the main ones). Check out this thread which looks at creating a vector city. I think Fogdown was one in photoshop/gimp and all the buildings placed using a stained glass filter. It is a beauty, but you can get close to it using symbols-along-lines in vector. Or you can use the stained glass effect on the buildings and then convert the result into curves in vector. Do a search on 'Lazy Man's city' - it's my eternal hope in trying to find a way to draw convincing city buildings quickly.