The 1.21 patch toned down corruption to the point where I find it worthwhile to rush courthouses in very far off cities. The combo of republic or democracy, a courthouse, and WLTKD is pretty big, and can make a useless city productive.
For those cities which you know will never, ever be productive, there are a couple of options, depending on what you want.
If you care about score, then you want to let them grow, while buying happiness improvements.
If you care only about efficiency, letting them cap off at size 12 (or 6, if they don't have a river/lake) and turning as many citizens into tax men or scientists is the way to go.
I've also had games where I had a group of 1-shield cities that I set to build workers. 1 worker per city every 10 turns... slowly but surely they built up.
-Arrian