My attempts to carve out a utopian, 100% aesthetically pleasing 2x2 embark tile are progressing, slowly but steadily. Unfortunately, the workers creating it are not so fortunate to be living in a utopia.
I basically carved out the uppermost slice of a huge artificial, jagged canyon into which I will build fancy houses and towers and waterfalls, etc. Then I crammed every single bed and workshop, etc. into this one medium sized room while construction proceeded on the rest of the stuff, and until other areas were ready for permanent residence.
Unfortunately, this means a festering shanty town for the workers, who constantly get miasma-d, run out of alcohol (so hard to tell what the hell is going on without proper stockpiles), get picked off by gobbos and fire imps due to the small map and meager defenses, etc. Clothes are strewn everywhere, because chests are an unnecessary luxury. Occasional cave-ins and other massive construction side effects wipe out workers and put multiple holes in my shanty town floor. Coffins are strewn everywhere haphazardly. Miners regularly get crushed, lost and die of thirst in the maze of simultaneous and dangerous construction operations going on. The hospital is a bed, a table and a chest in a 4x2 activity area in the middle of the forge area...
TWICE now we have accidentally breached the volcano that the canyon wraps around, flooding the entire canyon and incinerating multiple people with lava and brush fires, until I could diverge murky pools to plug up the holes with obsidian.
However, the Earth is struck all the same! The canyon is now majestically spanning 4-5 z layers over much of the map, and has some dormitories and a keep built for those who will ultimately not receive houses. The central, aesthetically pleasing utility shaft is working out nicely, as well. It has a 3x3 (minus the tile in the center) stairway going up and down. In the center tile of that is a space for a vertical machine axle for power wherever desired (run on cave lake flow). Surrounding that are three large, centralized pipes: one full of controlled magma supply from the volcano, but with floodgates, two empty tubes for magma and water drainage of various projects, respectively, and one tiny, high-pressure water line connected to a large reservoir up top (filled with cave lake pump stack, only when empty to avoid lag) for instantly filling any trap or cistern below. Thus, running, nice-looking water and magma and power on tap on every floor, as desired! Workshops and storage are in a handful of layers around the utility shaft ~15 z levels down to not be an eyesore to the utopians later on.
Once I have a replacement for every part of my shanty town, I am going to evacuate everyone, dig around the edges, and cave the entire 40x20ish floor into oblivion about 8 z levels down to open the canyon to the sky (later to be glassed in). It will be good riddance.