Best way to build a City in Survival?

I personally always like to have a friend or two help me out when building cities or things in survival because then it really adds some differences between the builds if you let them go off of their imagination. If you would be building it solo then i don't personally have any specific strategy except for try to make things look different so it's not just like seeing the same house or the same bridge as you see everywhere else in the build. Just have fun with it and it will come out great. ^_^