I like observing big sites/ media sites they often have a deep url structure.
Big sites in cosmetics= byrdie now has shorter domains , means, click on hairs then the hairs category page has this url: byrdie/hairs. Then click of one of their hair articles, then url is= byrdie/ hair article....
Many media sites have a deeper url structue like cnn, topics business.
then the url on category page is: cnn/business , click on subtopic tech, then url is= cnn/business/tech
click on one article then url is: cnn/business/tech/article.....
I think the cnn url structure is better it goes deep good for seo. But not forget about your sitemap url limits, this url from cnn:
cnn/business/tech/article has 4 urls to index! That means you will reach faster your sitemap url limit....
I will use the shorter url, (less url crawling limit) category page has breadcrumbs and description, all posts have a link back to the parent category, to home page and with plugin to next related post with that you will build enough internal backlinks for seo or with click on Logo the user jumps back to the home page.
Then I have a hub page with 7 long articles, each articles hase 2-3 sections with facts and deeper insights.
The home page will look like an hub overview similar to bloomberg(com)/europe overview of all topicsw, some blog posts
each with indicidual description and each category page has it's own description.
Then using Rank Meta plugin the sitemap has a big url limit of 50.000 urls.......
With that structure, hubs, long articles and blog (curating content) , the categories have unique topic names but related to topics (that's different than only keywords!) with that I hope google will love it.
Happy Weekend !