Industry

Likes trains, especially rail/subway connections to neighbors.

Sims complaining about High-Tech jobs

Select all ordinances that encourage low-pollution industry--basically everything in the zoning ordinance section. Then, you need to wait until your sims have a high enough EQ to fill those high-tech jobs. This could take awhile. Make sure you have fully funded (or overfunded!) education and enough education buildings to support your population. (See the FAQ)

Commercial

Likes highways.

Water

Most efficient to use water pumps because they provide more water/space than desalination plants and last 110 years as opposed to 74 years.

How to milk the power deals to make tons of money.

Sell electricity generated by Fusion plants to your largest neighbor. Find out who your largest neigbor is from the "Neighbors window" and build a power connection only to that neigbor. Your largest neighbor will be able to give you the most money. If you're generating a surplus of power, you will be asked for a power deal. Reject the offers until you're offered more than $10 per megawatt per month. Once the deal is in place, about every 3-5 years, your neighbor will ask you to renegotiate to buy more electricity and you should accept. Eventually, you'll be rolling in dough, but make sure to keep an eye on the age of your plants and replace them when they start to decline. The size of your neighbors fluctuates, so you you should keep an eye on that too. You can apply these principles to the garbage and water deals as well, but garbage creates pollution and water pumps are annoying to replace.

How to lower pollution

Give your trash to your neighbors, works especially well for smaller cities who sell lots of (pollution-free) electricity.

X-density is not X-density

X-density is the highest density a zone can develop too. So you won't always get X-density buildings on X-density zoned tiles. This means that in a smaller city with low commercial demand, your high density commercial zones will usually not develop fully. After population increases over about 400,000, commercial demand skyrockets and large commercial buildings will develop better. This is because the internal economy of the city is thought to be self-sustaining after reaching about 400K, rather than relying on the exports of industry. You can force large commercial buildings (maybe a few) in a small city by zoning only a little amount of high-density commercial and making the land value of those tiles really high by placing lots of water and parks nearby.

Ordinances

An ordinance is a municipal regulation. That just means that it's a rule made by the city that everyone living in that city must follow. The city you live in probably has ordinances too, and you could find out about them from your local government office. An example of an ordinance is the Leaf Burning Ban. What it does is lower the air pollution rate in your city. Each ordinance has a particular effect, good or bad, on some aspect of the city. Another example is the Parking Fines ordinance. This ordinance reduces traffic and gives you money, but discourages commercial businesses. In Simcity 3000, some of the items listed under ordinances are really more like government services than rules. Examples of these are Free Clinics, Junior Sports, and the Clean Industry Association. But, they are similar to ordinances in that they have a particular effect on your city.

Pollution

Pollution is of three types; air, water, and garbage. Garbage is produced by every type of zone and will cover your city unless you do something about it. What you can do is build landfills, recycling centers, or incinerators. Water pollution is produced by every type of building too. You can eliminate this type of pollution by building some water-treatment plants. Air pollution is produced mainly by traffic and industrial zones, but to some degree by almost every type of building. You can enact ordinances to reduce pollution. Also, anything that lowers traffic, like bus stops and mixed-zoning, will reduce air pollution. (Mixed zoning means putting all three types of zones somewhat near each other so Sims have less distance to travel.) By having a high education rate, you can reduce pollution because industries will go high-tech and these pollute less.

Non-obvious things that will limit a cities growth.

• Industrial zones in high land value areas. Move industrial zones out of the center of the city. The center of the city can sustain itself without them, but may be helped by transportation connections to industrial zones on the outskirts. You may or may not see a complaint about industrial land being too expensive if you have this problem.
• Not enough parks and recreation. You must have a minimum amount of parkland to support a given amount of residential population, otherwise, you're city won't grow. You may or may not see a complaint about sims wanting more fun in their lives if you have this problem.
• You will also have to build the stadium after about 250K population. (See the FAQ)
• I think you also have to have a certain number of connections to neighboring cities via transport or airport runways.
• The obvious things are low enough tax rates, roads, power, water/sewer, police stations, and garbage collection. Everything else is pretty much superfluous from a simulation point of view.

Disclaimer: I try not to post inaccurate information, nevertheless, some of it may be incorrect.