Is the game a City Painter or a City Simulation in 2026?

Apologies if this info is already taken for granted. I haven't played this game but I love CS1. I stopped looking for news about CS2 after the launch where all the reports about the fake simulation happened.

A few years later and I'm hearing some people say that the game has gotten a lot better. Others call it a "city painter" instead of a city simulator like CS1. Do people and products need to move through the city instead of teleporting? What's the state of these things? I don't care about graphics, I just care about the gameplay that stems from the running simulation.