The game does have autosave. I can't remember if it's enabled by default or not, but you can enable it and set how often it saves in the Options menu. It creates just one autosave, so never rely on it for anything other than backup in case of crashes. I have mine set to every 15 min - that doesn't cause me to lose too much progress for how I play and also doesn't have the saves interrupt me too much.
Since we're talking about saves, I just want to recommend you always save as a new file as well. Saves can get corrupted sometimes, so to minimize the risk of losing your city, it's a really good idea to have more saves. I add a number at the end so I have CityName1, CityName2, CityName3 and so on. If a save gets corrupted I just lose some progress instead of my entire city.
Lastly it might indeed be worth looking into the crash. You can share your logs here and we can try and help figure out what caused it. Perhaps it was a one time thing, perhaps there's a problem...
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