Site Hierarchy State –> Cities –> Post

Many others might have faced this road block, so I thought to post it here and see if we can find a collective solution. I am trying to create a CMS site based on geo specific services locations. Now, here is the site workflow that I would like to achieve:

Home page (with 50 states link) → State pages (parent category with links to child categories) → City pages (child categories with links to post titles) → Local Service pages (posts)

A user has to pick the state, and then select city to see all the available services in that city, and then click on a service business link to be able to go to a specific local services page.

URL structure would be –

– https://www.domain.com/california/san-francisco/local-service-page1
– https://www.domain.com/texas/san-antonio/local-service-page4
etc.

Below are list of challenges I am facing currently:

– How to populate parent category page with all related hyperlinked categories
– How to populate child category pages with all related hyperlinked post titles
– What is the best combination of Page / Post format to achieve the above workflow?
– How to add parent / child category for each post in bulk

I have tried without much success, so your help and insights will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.