The more I play it, the more I guess I'm okay with the smaller map.
I guess it's nice that your next objective is never going to be ridiculously far away, and if you want to go to a particular store, you don't have to drive for days.
But I'm also seeing more examples of how everything in this game is "less". I did my first few activities today (insurance fraud and trafficking), and they don't give you any sort of setup at all. In SR2, you usually got a little scene, a little character interaction, before a particular activity, which I liked. It wasn't necessary, but it added to the character. In SR3, nothing. You just get right into the activity, and it just feels half-assed.
I haven't gotten sick of shopping for clothes (yet), but I have stopped going to the plastic surgeon to change my body type every ten minutes like I did in SR2, so that's a bummer.