This is one of my favourite books. I didn't re-read it for this challenge so I'm unlikely to provide great detail.
I never had an issue with the future Oxford, but it was never the focus for me. The plague was my focus and I ate that up. Loved every word of it.
This is veering off course a little but I recently read
Passage by Connie Willis. Some of the writing for this novel was quite frustrating until I realised that it was deliberately frustrating and ended up making the book stronger.
I wonder if the "2D" aspect of future Oxford that people are discussing was a deliberate way of making the 14th century sections more alive. For some reason any memories I have of future Oxford seem to be de-saturated, but the 14th century is still vivid and colourful to me.