Yes, I just found that after researching for a while and that does not seem like the optimal solution to me. First, players who do not want to go down the "Civilization"  route for their research are still looking at having to take up a ton of time building houses.  Also, houses are not a "strateigc resource" from what I have seen. Unlike Barrakcs or an Academy or some building that requires me to balance the beneift the building will provide versus the upkeep and time I would spend to build it, housing is purely a matter of micromanagement - build  houses so the city can grow. This is the type of thing I should be able to leave to the AI as an automated task. Another thing to consider is that I am unlikely to pick the housing tech when it comes up, no matter how much I complain about micromanagement. It is usually competing against something vastly more useful in terms of technology research, and after spending turns to perform research I want a technology that provides me with a benefit beyond mere convenience.

I would greatly prefer the whole process be automated. Remove all the different types of housing and just have "Housing" be an ongoing project I can apply to a city. It is a lot easier to have it be something I need to remember to toggle on and off rather than making it a click-fest on the map.

This is one of those things that Beta 1 doesn't cover. Just be patient... Even once you get apartments it can be a pain and you have to dedicate much of your city to housing... but that will get worked out. So hold these thoughts until Beta 3

But yeah, getting to a lvl 5 city right now is pretty tough even for a capital city with 3 food resources nearby.

I agree that it's hard to get over 3rd population cap even with many food resources (or especially when you have many, as harvesting them takes 4 tiles each!), if you build anything else than houses (especially 4 tiles buildings ). A city should have more available tiles to build or houses should host more inhabitants, I think.

And I'm not sure you need resources to be adjacent to harvest them. I did harvest one that was 2 tiles away from my city limit (orchard). Even though I found it weird, I didn't screen it because I didn't know wether it should be impossible or not.

The  rules about building stuff over resources are not clear in the game inho, I can't make heads or tails of it really, I think it's distance from the city center. This has to be "crystal clear" because of the significant tactical value of resources.