Yes, but the game doesn't actually load up the images until you attempt to view them. And once you go to the City View screen, it has to load all the Animations (not necessarily the static icons) for the units you can build at this time, as it displays an image from the animations in the big 'Build Queue' button.
So the crash could be caused by the fact that the game can't find the animations for one of the units that you can build at the time.