Most RPG towns are just that: Towns.

Midgar is one of the few cities that actually feel like a city.

It is something that Square seems to have lost (Academia says hello), but the feel of Midgar is something that we'll probably never see again, because Midgar was approached differently to most other cities.

Midgar was designed with the multiple areas in mind. It was designed with a relatively self-contained story (the fight against Shinra), and designed to highlight and serve that story. It was almost built like a world of another game, with different zones and areas. You got to explore the infrastructure and the populated areas each.

Rabanastre is the closest we probably get, but it has nowhere about it that feels unique. Every quarter of the city is the same. There aren't the different areas for the different classes of citizenry. There are no run down areas. There are no areas featuring brand new architecture, none featuring the ancient structures of the city.

This is one of the major problems with cities and towns in RPGs. They are all the same. Look at Kalm. It's a mining town, and that's pretty much all it is. Corel, same thing. Rocket Town is built around the rocket. The architecture, the town design, it's all pretty much identical all the way through each of these places.

Now look at your home city. Do you have a downtown area? A suburb? An industrial area? A park? A slum?

And, as one final note on Midgar: Everything in it is separate. This doesn't seem like a big thing, but it is. Midgar has neighborhoods. The people of Sector 7 know each other, they're a tightly knit community, but they only know of Wall Market as a shopping center. When the plate comes down, it's a tragedy for all of Midgar, and yet the people in other sectors are also somewhat distanced from it, because it didn't happen to their community. This sense of distinct communities, of groups that are separated, yet still part of a greater whole, is huge.

Not only is Midgar more reflective of a real city in structure (general structure, not the floating pizza thing, smart alecks), but it's also far more reflective of the way communities within real cities grown and interact with each other.