Black&white big city

[feanaaro]

That looks pretty good. What software are you using? And what process? It looks like the city "blocks" are layers with a drop shadow, but I can't be sure.

I am using photoshop 5.1 and nothing else for the moment (though perhaps this style would better be done in Illustrator).
It's very simple, the "common buildings" are all together in a layer with drop shadow (with some noise which is quite lost at this resolution but can still be seen in larger shadows), a 1px 75% opacity black inner outline, and covered by a pattern (one of those boundled with PS, incredible as it may seem to those who really know how to use the program, i have been unable to fetch myself one that looked better). Going from blocks to single buildings is mostly done by subtraction, erasing.
The "notable building" are the same, only with a stronger outline, no pattern but a ligh grey colour and bigger shadows.
Streets are simply white stripes with 1 px outline.
Labels are made with Belwe Lt font, with a 4 px white outline for making them stand out from the underlying city parts.

So, not much to explain, very basic.
One problem is that, though this particular city is completely flat, I would not know how to render elevations in this style, and also I am not sure of how to do cultivated land, of which there will be some outside the walls.