Absurdly Cool City

In fictional settings authors often decide to make great cites for their work. In "classic" sci-fi the city served as a common trope to be used to represent whatever society that existed. They, when animated, drawn or otherwise shown a Design Student's Orgasm usually occurs. This comes in two flavors and is often the capital of The Federation, The Alliance, The Empire, or The Republic. Is usually a City of Adventure.

Shiny and Awesome

 * Vampire New York as seen in Daybreakers. While it's the exact opposite of "shiny", the sheer infrastructure of adapting the biggest city in the world to Vampires gets it put in this category. Besides, Dark is shiny for vampires.
 * Themyscra of Wonder Woman. Just take a look.
 * As seen above, Coruscant is a planet. It's so large they needed an entire subsidiary guide just to explain how it worked.
 * The titular Megatokyo.
 * New Domino City from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's.
 * Any city level from Ratchet and Clank. You'd think those guys were architects.
 * Metropolis from Superman.
 * Dentech City from Rockman EXE. The fact that Everything Is Online compounds this. And its virtual counterpart Navi City which is online.
 * Trantor from the Foundation series. It covers all the planet, it's the capital of the galactic empire, and continues many kilometers underground.
 * The Citadel from Mass Effect. It's a a giant space station. Just check out its page. It. Is. Awesome.
 * Mitakihara City from Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
 * Sternbild City, a three-leveled city decorated with several Statue-of-Liberty-sized monuments from Tiger and Bunny is also a nice example.
 * Atlantis from Stargate Atlantis. Crystal Spires on hyperdrives.
 * Cloudsdale from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, a hovering (and possibly mobile) city made almost entirely from clouds and rainbows and featuring a weather factory.

Comic Books

 * Gotham City from Batman, epicly post-earthquake when the city looks like a mash up of the 1930s, Gothic London and a Modern city.

Film

 * The eponymous Dark City is a Scenery Porn-tastic, German Expressionism-inspired, Always Night City in a Bottle.

Literature

 * Ankh-Morpork from Discworld, though most of its dark has turned into grime and might occasionally become part of something served in a bun.

Uncategorized

 * The titular Metropolis. It borrows from H. G. Wells The Time Machine and has a shiny Art Deco city on top and a gritty worker's city under the earth.
 * Minas Tirith.
 * Asgard.
 * And the major cities of World of Warcraft: Silver Moon, Undercity, the Exodar, Dalaran and Shattrah.
 * Warhammer 40,000 has quite a lot. Eldar cities and the Dark Eldar capital of Commorgah are both very impressive (the former are Crystal Spires and Togas style cites housed inside Craftworlds, spacecrafts the size of small moons, the latter is a Dark Towers and Spikes style city located inside the Webway). Humans have numerous heavily populated worlds with impressive looking cities, but the grand price goes to Holy Terra, seat of the Imperium. The Imperial Palace alone covers most of what used to be Eurasia.
 * The titular City of Ember.
 * New Mombasa from Halo 3.
 * The Human City from The Matrix. It's a virtual merger of several real-world cities.
 * The city in Blade Runner is certainly Dark and Gritty, as depicted in fanart here.
 * Dinotopia's Waterfall City.
 * Drowtales: Chel'el'sussoloth, literally means "City of light in the darkness". For Lonely Rich Kid Ariel, it's a fantasy world beyond her wildest dreams, to Genre Savvy Cloudcuckoolander Lirel, it's a Wretched Hive that also has Crystal Spires and Togas... perfect for having A Hell of a Time.
 * In Futurama, New New York actually finds itself suffering from a garbage shortage, while they dump their radioactive sewage directly into Old New York and the sewers below, the later of which now look like this because of a civilisation of mutants (who are required to live their by law).
 * In James and the Giant Peach, James tends to think of New York City this way.
 * In RoboCop, OCP portrays Delta City as Shiny and Awesome, but, like every other product OCP makes...
 * Star Trek's Stratos City: Crystal Spires and Togas for everyone! (Except Troglodytes.)
 * The Federation's own capitol, San Francisco.
 * Star Wars:
 * Aldera.
 * Cloud City, which was allegedly inspired by Stratos City.
 * "Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
 * Theed, which could have been inspired by Waterfall City.
 * Stargate: The Ancients, Great City Ships (notably Atlantis).
 * Real Life, more or less:
 * Dubai.
 * New York City.
 * Hong Kong.
 * "Ubiquitos". Also known as 'The City' from Mirror's Edge. See also Ascetic Aesthetic and Scenery Porn.