The majority of the games I've run over the years have been homebrew, and the bulk of them have been low-level games in low-magic settings. I do recall running Dragon Mountain back in the 90s, and I've been a player in a few games that may have gone as high as level 10, but those games have been the outliers. My friends and I have generally found D&D's sweet spot to be between levels 3 and 8.
So what is a "high-magic" setting in Dungeons and Dragons? Generally, it's defined as a higher-level setting in which magic is commonly accepted as a part of everyday life.
In my opinion, no existing setting has really taken every aspect of this into account. Eberron has done well in taking some small steps in that direction, but in this article I'm going to explore a number of aspects of a high-magic setting which I don't generally see discussed.
Consider for a moment this example.
DM: Okay, you've still got 3 days until the Baron needs you, what's everyone doing?
WizKnave: I want to go back to the market.
Players: (collective groan)
DM: Again?
WizKnave: No, I've got a plan. This'll be quick. Is that silk merchant still there?
DM: The one you charmed two days ago? He'll remember you. He lost a lot of gold.
WizKnave: Got it. That's fine. Do I see him?
DM: Sure, you find him in a few minutes in the open air market.
WizKnave: Okay, I stay far back out of sight and look for his gold coffer.
DM: After your whole mage hand thing, the merchants are all using heavier coffers.
WizKnave: No problem, I expected that. Is he selling his silks alone?
DM: Uhh, no. He's got a young woman with him today.
WizKnave: Damn, two of them. I guess the minor illusion trick is out. How many other people are near them?
DM: There lots of people in the market, but nobody within maybe five feet right now.
WizKnave: Great. Okay, I wait until nobody is looking and cast sleep on them.
DM: Sleep. Well, uh, great. These aren't adventurers. I guess they fall asleep. The vendor at the next booth over is also in range, and he falls into his table with a loud crash. People are looking.
WizKnave: I stay back and wait.
DM: Okay, some people have gone up to check on them.
WizKnave: I move up with them, behind them, and take off my cloak, throwing it over his coffer. Then I take another few seconds "checking". Not long enough for him to wake up. Then I pick up my cloak with the coffer full of gold in it and walk off.
The truth is that in a setting where magic exists, even if it's low-level magic, it's going to create such absolute chaos that it's nearly impossible to envision all the things that someone with access to even just first level spells might try. But in a world where these things have existed for centuries, people living in that world would have seen it all. This is our challenge as DMs: to imagine the myriad unexpected uses of magic.
Law Enforcement
As cited above, something that's likely to come up in gameplay is the use of spells to engage in extralegal activities, whether it's breaking into the villain's manor or eavesdropping on the cult of Vecna. Still, any civilization in which magic exists will certainly be accustomed to and account for magical threats. Your PC is not going to be the first one to have ever thought to charm the guards or wild shape into a mouse and sneak past a checkpoint.
There's reason I've focused primarily on first level spells and cantrips in my examples. Even these low-level spells and abilities can completely throw a wrench into an adventure if they catch you off guard. Once you begin to add teleportation or high-level divination into the mix, it gets worse.
If these abilities exist, then criminals will have access to them. And even if a scroll of teleportation costs 1000 gold, then any vault in the city with more gold than that becomes a valid target. Finding such a vault with divination magic wouldn't be difficult. This means that any and every store of wealth will need magical protection. Anything else is just a plot hole - a DM oversight. Every well-off household and market will have defenses against illusion, divination, and teleportation. This kind of high-magic security system would be at least as common as modern-world security systems. The alarm spell would be ubiquitous, and versions of it which cover greater areas and work in more intricate ways would most certainly exist. Don't limit yourself to published magic when it comes to worldbuilding.
Counters such as the alarm spell would be central to a magical society being able to function at all. The city's government would absolutely need to have the most skilled wizards, able to create permanent abjuration and divination effects to protect cityfolk from arcane criminals. City guards would be equipped with gear that allowed them to detect magic and invisibility, and they would all have access to silence spells. They would regularly watch marketplaces using basic divination, and make sure to take note of any suspicious magic. The primary things they would be watching for would be illusions, mage hands, detect thoughts spells, and enchantments such as charm person.
When criminals are caught, court proceedings and trials in a magical society would likely be far different than they are in real life. After making sure any magical protections against divination are removed from a suspect, putting them in a zone of truth would quickly reveal their innocence or guilt. And any murder victim could be spoken to postmortem to learn the identity of the killer. These procedures would be standard everyday business for law enforcement in a magical society. Remember this the next time your PCs leave the bandits' corpses in an alleyway.
Magical Society
One of the primary questions that should come up as you're designing your high-magic city is what type of civilization are you building? Is it a democracy wherein all the races live together in an urban utopia? Is your city ruled by the priest-emperor whose dark justiciars patrol the streets meting out heavy-handed justice? Or does the council of mages run the city, making liberal use of detect thoughts to ensure public compliance and weed out agitators?
In a utopian society, non-magical disease can easily be wiped out, low-level druids can ensure that no one ever goes hungry, and even life-threatening injuries can be made trivial with first level healing. On the other hand, in the type of civilization we more often see in D&D settings, the powers that be could ensure that they remain in power endlessly by employing Contact Other Plane to identify threats well before they happen. Thus, PCs who may not yet have begun planning to act against the government may find themselves targets of pre-emptive justice.
Most settings will find themselves a place somewhere between a dark dystopia and a perfect utopia. In such a well-functioning society, the local government may require those who employ the arcane arts to register, much as we have licenses to drive a car. Casting spells without a license may result in fines or jail time, with violations resulting in revocation of your arcane license. Similarly, using magic in the commission of any crime is likely to result in your arcane license being revoked. And of course, any interaction with law enforcement which involves magic is likely to begin with the guard asking to see an arcane license.
Arcane Infrastructure
In a world where magic exists, it only makes sense that the populace would want to make use of it to improve their quality of life. It's difficult to imagine all the ways in which this would manifest, and most of these ways won't likely come up in your typical D&D game, but let's take a cursory look at a few of them.
Transportation
In a high-magic setting, horse-drawn carriages and traditional ocean-going ships seem quaint. Perhaps the ships sail the skies, and flying rickshaws whisk commuters around the city. Any high-magic city worth its salt will also have teleportation circles set up to trade with faraway communities, although these are likely to be well-regulated and well-guarded.
Agriculture
Traditional medieval societies dedicated a huge portion of their resources to growing food, and farming was by far the most common profession. With the aid of magic, fields can more quickly be plowed, crops can more easily be harvested, and peoples' time freed for other endeavors.
Communication
Sending Stones are a Dungeons and Dragons equivalent of a telephone, and in a high-magic civilization, they would likely be in strong demand, and thus quite popular. Animal Messengers might be a slightly more affordable, and thus more common, option. As such, there are likely messenger services which specialize in this kind of communication.
Public Works
The city would most likely employ a number of mages who specialize in telekinesis, using them in construction projects to lift what would otherwise take many men, or perhaps two or three ogres.
The city might also require churches to engage in public service, casting purify water at outhouses or on sewer systems regularly to improve public health.
Education
Public education is a modern convention. In a medieval fantasy setting, apprenticeships and religious education would seem more likely. But in a high-magic city, students may be taught cantrips at a young age. Perhaps school is a privilege available only to the wealthy, but if language, math, and history are taught, then basic arcana is likely a subject as well.
Commerce
Every campaign is going to have its own rules about buying or selling magic items. Xanthar's Guide to Everything has rules about buying a magic item which involve spending time and money looking before determining whether the item is even available, and rules for selling magic items which involve soliciting and entertaining offers. These are excellent starting points, but in the end these matters are up to the DM. I've run campaigns where magic items are exceedingly rare, and others where you can go down to ye olde magic shoppe and peruse a collection of wands and enchanted blades. In a high-magic setting, you're more likely to fall closer to the latter.
But these are all items for use by adventurers, and most of the citizens of your high-magic city aren't adventurers. These good folk will be far more interested in magical hair cream to cure baldness, self-cleaning chamber pots, maidenweed to act as a contraceptive, and warding amulets that drive off biting insects. It's easy to go down the rabbit hole on this and come up with dozens of common magic items which adventurers may not care about, but which would change the lives of commoners. The Rod of Laundering means no more days spent by the river with a basket of soiled clothes. Cooling runes can lower the temperature in an area by ten degrees - perfect for those summer months. And quasi-legal love potions, which turbo-charge the imbiber's libido, are a hot grey-market seller.
With the prevalence of magic, it's entirely feasible that many traditional professions may have disappeared entirely. What use is a translator when Comprehend Languages exists? Traditional lock-and-key setups may lose all relevance when Knock spells are commonplace and Arcane Lock spells are cheaper than mechanical locks. And the field of medicine is entirely moot when you can opt for magical healing.
Create Food and Water is a third level spell, higher level than most discussed here, and the spell description does mention that the created food is bland. But a chef could easily season that food, or a wizard could modify the spell to create more appealing meals. A lower-level version of the spell which creates far less food of a more gourmet variety could easily lead to the high-magic version of fast food, summoned hot and fresh on demand by your sorcerous chef.
Illusionists in our high-magic city may have the most illustrious career of all. While illusion is all too-often concerned with deception, it can be far better employed in theater. In a world where the technology of photography doesn't exist, audiences can still be entertained by theater productions with lifelike dragons breathing fire right inside the opera house, all with zero danger to the audience. The illusion theater industry has the potential to bigger and more culturally impactful than 21st century movie theaters.
The possibilities for magic in this kind of fantasy setting are endless. And the more time you spend thinking about these minor details, the better fleshed-out your high magic setting will become.
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