Hey, I like my grids!
The Mountainhome, while still being grid-heavy, is now broken up by a rail system for both passengers and cargo. It's also now host to an international airport, so if you build an airport in your own cities, they should get traffic which is a good way to drive commercial demand. Now I just need to figure out why all these mansions refuse to be replaced by apartments and condos even though my R-$ and R-$$ demand is through the roof.
The region is at 177k population now, not bad. Note the little planes flying around!
I've added a mod to the game, which is the Census Vault (and unlockable Census Tower), available from the rewards menu. When you use the query tool on it, you can see detailed information on your demands, demand drives and penalties, population, EQ, and most importantly your demand caps, an important piece of information which is normally hidden. I've also added RTMT, Road Top Mass Transit, which add bus and subway tiles which go directly on top of roads, so that you don't have to knock down buildings just to place bus stops.
For a Discord channel, I recommend you join the one in my signature, it's where I hang out normally. I expect it's safe to play while your neighbor is playing as long as you don't make new connections. If you make a new connection while they're on though, then the next time they save will probably delete their half of the connection. I have no idea what sort of problems that will cause.