Take out all of the loans when they become available, and use the money to fund expansion further. Use a cheap road layout like a grid of 2-lane one-way roads. You may need two or more sets one-way roads to handle the traffic.
Otherwise, surrounding your coal plant with dirty industry will work okay. If you've got arable land, I suggest you go with farming industry, as it's not as polluting as regular industry so you can mix it with your residential and commercial, which will save on infrastructure cost. The only other services that are important as soon as they unlock are garbage and cemetery. One fire dept and no police/education should be enough for the starting city.
Use the cheapest sources for utilities (coal power plant, minimal amount of water, drain pipe sewage), and don't buy any services you don't need. Make sure you spend your initial money on as much population as you can. In order to get to a medium-sized city quickly, it's thus important to spend most of your starting money and income on population, e.g. As money comes from taxes which directly correlates with population you get exponential growth. In general the biggest factor that will slow your city's development early on will be money. Use the general Simcity 4 strategy: Build slums.
