We introduce a simple yet powerful and versatile analytical framework to approximate the SIR distribution in the downlink of cellular systems. It is based on the mean interference-to-signal ratio and yields the horizontal gap (SIR gain) between the SIR distribution in question and a reference SIR distribution. As applications, we determine the SIR gain for base station silencing, cooperation, and lattice deployment over a baseline architecture that is based on a Poisson deployment of base stations and strongest-base station association. The applications demonstrate that the proposed approach unifies several recent results and provides a convenient framework for the analysis and comparison of future network architectures and transmission schemes, including amorphous networks where a user is served by multiple base stations and, consequently, (hard) cell association becomes obsolete.