What if the Founders of what is the US OTL decided to use city-states as the basis of their new country? Connecticut is essentially a city-state.
Nah. Too few cities outside the coast. Like, what's New York going to do? A New York City city-state for Long Island and the southern few counties of New York, and an Albany city-state covering... everything else? You're still going to end up with pretty big states once you get inland a ways.