I have yet to make a sketch of the future UI. At first I was thinking of going the rollercoaster tycoon / transport tycoon route and have the buttons on the top have everything else in floating windows. But I don't like floating windows...
I like your suggestion on putting it on the left side. I can put what needs to be always shown like the camera controls, the time and money to be shown in a panel in the bottom left. The tools can be shown on the left side of the screen. And an event bar on bottom of the screen and which a bigger panel can pop from it to show stats and what not. Well I'm describing the Simcity 4 UI...