Everything is better than Palace Cinema. Town Hall overall is comparable or better than Grand Emporium. In my opinion at least. When I judge a set I factor in how many interesting build methods does it have, how does it display, the parts it supplies useful for other things, Interior, WOW factor. Town Hall scores high on display, useful parts, and mid level on build methods (high if just the roof was judged), mid-level wow factor, mid-level on Interior. Just as a comparison, Only Parisian Restaurant and Green Grocer score high for WOW factor for me for all the modulars I own. Parisian Restaurant is probably the set you would base all other sets rankings on. Its that good, I score it nearly perfect in all categories. Also I am not nearly as enamored with Pet Shop as a lot of others are (I do own 3 sets of it though) and would probably rank Town Hall above or equal to pet shop when averaging out all factors. It scores lower in some areas but higher in others. Palace Cinema scores low in nearly all categories, I plan on doing a massive modification of it to suit my cities standards.
One note about Pet Shop though is I would not mind seeing some 75 dollar sets of half modulars (aka 16x32 plates) in the same style in addition to the regular modular they release each year. I would love to see what they could do with small shops and row houses and so on in that style and it would offer a under $100 pricetag for people. Please LEGO, take my idea. They sort of did it with the creator sets like the bike shop but I want them to go farther and make them actually fully compatible with modulars but at 16x32 plates they would be half the price. I think that would allow for a much more expanded number of types of shops and so on.
