As it appears, some major reforms were conducted in the early Empire. "I've found Rome a city of Stone and made it a City of Marble" as Augustus said wasn't that megalomaniac. Statues, theaters, roads and public buildings were often reformed or rebuild. Public housing or planned city building like today weren't something imaginable, but the Romans quickstarted urban planing to settle city areas and how to do it. An impoverished Rome as in the time of the Grachi brothers, with hundreds of thousands wandering around hopelesly wasn't the reality anymore. The city peaked at 1 million inhabitants, but shrank as the Empire declined and its architecture went from glorious to miserable. It was an unequal place, with pretty rich sectors while other neighboring areas were pretty much slums (specially outside the pomerium), since always. It's said the city was loud every single moment and smelling ash for most of the time (fires weren't that uncommon). Culturally, it's pretty hard to say, even harder than the Empire itself. During the Monarchy for certain they had a heavy etruscan influence, but too little is known. In the Republic, they were in touch with greek culture and everyday life was pretty standard among the patricians. The Empire didn't changed much to that, it all remained actually pretty standard among patricians until the early middle ages (maybe even further)