If you're heading off to google images to see how this compares to real and not overexposed cityscapes, then the below links will save you some time. Open the last picture up while you watch the video at 2:09, bottom left building.
Projects like these are great examples of hitting that 5% that gets you 95% of the way home. When he talks about avoiding simulations, that's precisely right. I wish he would talk more about how he's choosing the right things to focus on. Perhaps it's just luck? For example, I think that a few of his steps, like bloom, were detrimental. Irregular streets might have solved the streets problem by hiding them (cf. 1st pic). Brightening up buildings in the distance could also have made this look even better.
Introversion, the UK games company that did Uplink, Defcon, and Darwinia, has been working on a game called Subversion that has procedurally generated cities, from terrain mapping to placing desk chairs in the offices of the buildings. http://www.introversion.co.uk/subversion/
Young's is nice, but the Subversion concept is orders of magnitude more awesome because it populates the city on the fly, as you approach. Like a fractal.
quite engrossing. i read and skimmed. lots of great pictures.
this is the opposite experience to blogs posts that run out of steam halfway and then end with some dumb conclusion. well done shamusyoung. wish there were more of these kind of project reports on hn.
Also check out his "terrain" series, it's terrific. http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=141