On second thought, there is practically no need for people to have their own plot of land if you're a member of a city.
Need storage? the bank is now private, and one person can just build a house and have shared storages in it then that's it.
I find it more useful to have a house outside of a city lot that i can just relocate to whenever i find it necessary. In theory, cities are great but the implementation atm definitely needs a lot of fine tuning.
This entire 'Tub' series of 'stolen leathers' is another issue, if players have the ability to have their own processing furniture in their home, then I can see the need to have your own house and would definitely eliminate a lot of the unnecessary problems.
Cities/Towns would have NPCs after all that out-of-towners wouldnt have, that's distinct enough for a city life vs wilderness life.
From my perspective, players having the option to have all of these furniture in their home might actually entice people to visit cities more so than just using it as a way point for their travels.
dont get me wrong, cities have definitely made travelling a bit more bearable this time around, but after it's built? theres nothing left to it other than a way point. The 'complex' social structure that it would supposedly bring didn't actually provided anything other than group of players building up a city then going off to travel.
I understand that this is an alpha state and not all features are implemented but right now, this is my feedback on what i've experienced on the state of cities/towns.
tldr; make homes more useful other than just a 'very far away storage area'.