I've been thinking about this subject recently and agree that if a society or even an individual had control of the city then it could prosper.
My own thoughts on the city itself:-
It requires a redesign, perhaps retaining the Hadesheim C teleporter but making the park area around it smaller.
There are three bridges leading away from Hades C. Maybe one should lead to an open area with Revivals, Storage, TT, auction, etc. Another could lead to the market (which should be relocated as part of the re-design). And another could lead to an existing area of the city where PvP has been enabled for events (a top idea and +rep when I read back to see who first suggested it).
I'd think that appartments would need to be available in close proximity to each of these three areas, in a similar style to the appartment towers on Amerthera. This would give people a place locally to store large amounts of items.
One thought that might be greated with indifference would be the removal of unsightly city walls that would be replaced by a wide, deep, water-filled moat that would keep mobs out. Perhaps this moat could be incomplete south of the city, allowing the occasional Spider into the city.
An idea that might be unpopular would be the placement of a limited number of hangars within the city. Another reason for people to visit, even if they are just passing through.
Finally, an idea that might be me getting ahead of myself. A PvP stadium within the city. I realise there are server/lag issues connected with this but if the event area was isolated on one server and the participants were unable to see the non-event areas (somehow, this is one for the boffins at
MA to fix up), while at the same time spectators entered a "spectator mode" where they could only watch the event and nothing else around them then maybe it would work.
And what kind of events could such a stadium host? PvP with guns is obvious, perhaps in the style of Paintball, for those of you familiar with that. En-knuckle boxing in a ring, in a similar style to the Queensbury rules. Or gladiator style events - top ubers one-on-one against Spiders and other nasty beasts.
Just my own thoughts on the matter.