I personally would rather have new maps than remakes. I get remaking an old map or two to remind people of ET, but I have already played those old maps and I’m already tired of them.
Concerning the “a city is a city” comment I don’t think this is true. Sure, you could focus on downtown centers like we see in LB but there are more cities in the world with open, interesting places but not necessarily downtown urban. Parts of San Diego and San Francisco can be this way. Maybe something with the Sydney opera house too (I’ve only seen pictures). Maps that get away from constant blacktop/concrete are nice. One could always make the first stage in a park (like Golden Gate Park) and finish the second part of the map in a building of some importance to visually break up the map stages and really define the stages of the map so it doesn’t feel like the same thing through the whole map.