I love a good Cities: Skylines time-lapse video, and this cinematic depiction of a city springing up from its designed bones by YouTube user Ben Barton leans into everything that makes the game great.
I particularly like the way that the video moves around the different spaces of a Skylines city that often show up in the play of the game but rarely make an appearance in these kinds of videos. Anyone who plays this game knows that you always end up creating these weird expansions on the map to house populations or cordon off industries from your city centers, and this video has all that.
I have definitely made my own version of a pollution island or a road that goes way off into the countryside to create a pseudo-suburb that boosts my population just enough to get to the next milestone. Some cinematic games sacrifice gameplay realism for aesthetic reasons, but it seems like this one does not, and that makes me feel better about my own weird habits as a player.
Ultimately, though, the video has what I think is the best possible end goal for a Skylines cinematic: it is calming. It allows you a little glimpse into the mind of another player, and it shows off all kinds of design concepts (like the excellent intersections at 1:58) that get me excited about diving back into the game.