The real problem with cities in ESO is that they have no real function. Once you do the 1-2 quests associated with a city or town hub, you leave it forever, and simply do your dealings in a zone capital.

In Skyrim (usually heavily modded, which helped) I spent an awful lot of time in the cities, usually to buy stuff from the vendors, that wasn't available elsewhere, as well as stock up on new foods, potions and gear to bring out into the world. With mods, the need to warm up at a fire, to sleep in a bed and other things was also a necessity. Not to mention that plenty of the quests in Skyrim require you to revisit and re-revisit many places and cities to finish off the quests.

Not so in ESO, most smaller towns have 1 or 2 quests at most, and even larger zone capitals have only a handful of quests to do, and once you're finished, you never have to return there again. Also, everything worth anything is found in dungeons and overland, you pretty much never have to buy anything from vendors. And the few things you might buy, like lockpicks or repair kits, you can just stock up in stacks of 200 with a huge inventory. The lack of carry weight really makes cities unnecessary in this game.

Look at any base game city other than the 3 zone capitals and Rawlkha - they're ghost towns. Look at Balmora and Tel Mora - ghosts towns. Look at every city in Summerset outside Alinor in half a year's time, look at Anvil, look at Abah's Landing, most of the time they're ghost towns, with just a handful of new players doing the quests there.

Until ZOS makes cities have better use and a reason to re-visit, then it's just wasted effort. Delves and public dungeons is pretty much the same, at least in DLC zones you have the daily delve quests that require you to go there. ZOS needs to be better at implementing content that lives on and can be enjoyed multiple times, instead of content that is just visited once for skyshards, completion and achievement, and then never seen again.
Why doesn't Balmora and Tel Mora have dailies? Whydon't they place some of the services and important NPCs out in the smaller towns? Vivec City and Alinor takes care of all your needs. What if the Battlegrounds merchant and quest NPC were only available in one of the other, smaller cities (you can still queue for BGs anywhere you please), why not move 1 of the 2 zone dailies out to a smaller town? Why not have more yearly events, like better legerdemain drops from a few specific smaller DLC cities, or better prices there, or merchant NPCs that sell stuff for a limited time there - there are many ideas, just something that actually makes the places worth exploring a second and third time.

I can't recall the last time I even bothered revisiting Balmora and Tel Mora after finishing the quests a year ago, why go there when I have everything and more in Vivec City.