For zoomed-in urban maps @mapcreator_io ’s Illustrator plugin can save you a lot of time. Zoom to your AOI, select a style, and it loads a pre-styled, layered SVG into your canvas: roads, rail, drainages, bodies of water, land cover, and a few street names. The layers are really groups so I have to paste them into real layers, not a problem since I'm usually using ~ten of the dozens of layers it downloads. Much faster than filtering and styling OSM/Census bureau road files; they comped me a license and I find myself reaching for it more and more. Wish I had this when I was a graphics editor.

Dunno if other cartographers run into this but much of my client work starts with a Google Maps screenshot. It’s the "default map" for everyone on Earth and, while I have aesthetic quibbles, I get it: Google Maps works, looks pretty good, and no one complains about it. You can't sweep the tide. BUT you can't use screenshots in a commercial project, so I often make "looks like" maps. If I don't need to add other geodata to a city-streets grid I reach for @mapcreator_io My usual workflow for basic city-scale maps (I'm retiring "large scale" and "small scale," terms not even useful as inter-cartog jargon): 1) Hustle road, park, water data out of the Census Bureau/OSM/Overture. 2) Filter in OGR/QGIS if there are many polylines, MAPublisher if there's under 10mb worth. 3) Style in Illustrator. With Mapcreator: 1) Pick an AOI with the Illustrator plugin, which grabs a complete, layered, styled city map. 2) Refine the look and type. MAPublisher is an impact driver, Mapcreator a ratcheting screwdriver; you don't need big torque for every project. The latter is $100/mo (I'm using a comped license) but if you have a W2 that might pay for it, ask for it instanter, if you make two of these maps per year it is a huge time-saver.