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An actual, honest-to-god game board is way off for me, so I figured a battle mat would be a good solution for the next couple of years. I see GW has one, which A) is unfortunately green and B) is probably more expensive than an equivalent non-GW product. But first I really want to know what you guys think about it in general.

1) Any problems with slippage, or does that rubber backing help?

2) Sturdy enough to be rolled and unrolled a bunch of times without falling apart?

1) What non GW options are there out there? And do any come in "urban" colors, greys, blacks, browns?

I think Chessex used to make cloth battle mats, I bought a green one many years ago and at the time they had tan and gray as well. I tired a quick google search but nothing came up.

The GW one should be fine though. They do make pretty good quality stuff.

Zuzzy makes a good quality mat from latex rubber. It runs around 55$ and they have a variaty of textures (city, dirt, flagstone),rolls up, and comes black so you can drybrush it.
I was thinking about picking one up but havn't gotten around to it yet.

If your going to paint onto latex it might help to mix a little latex into your paint acrilics mix really well into latex and you get a good flexible finish a side note however if the mt has been talced (to stop it sticking to iteslf this will need to be cleaned off really well if it's been varnished in some way you'd have to strip that off aswell which may prove difficult, contact the seller and ask if the latex is treated or if he can send oyu one untreated but with paper or some sort of other material between the layers