Now that they've somewhat fixed towns and made them function the way they seemingly want, the other ugly reality has become clear: it's such a piss-poor alternative to cities, from a gameplay point of view. In previous Civ games, settling a city was exciting. Developing it over time and seeing it grow from a fresh new settlement to a sprawling metropolis was so satisfying, and the mechanics involved in that were interesting enough to basically sustain a playthrough on its own. Just developing an empire and optimizing the structure was sufficiently engaging that you could feel like it was a proper game of Civ even if that's all you did.
Towns are a joke compared to that. A town in VII is barely more engaging to play with than a single district was in VI. There are so few decisions to make and so little interaction to be had that it really doesn't add any depth to the gameplay experience. And while you can convert them to cities, that's a) prohibitively expensive and b) not something you're supposed to do extensively. The game is designed around the assumption that you'll have something like 2-4 cities, maybe half a dozen in an unusually huge game where you go nuts with settlers. Any more than that is not worth it, not practical, not encouraged by the game's fundamental design.
Coupled with the dumbing-down of districts and the removal of builders, the whole element of establishing your empire in VII is such a pale imitation of its predecessors and doesn't feel satisfying at all. It doesn't really feel like playing a full-fledged game of Civ unless you're also engaging in all the other systems and dipping into warfare, competing for city-states, rushing wonders, etc. And this, together with the repetitive nature of legacy paths, is why every game feels the same in VII. There isn't a satisfying, appealing way to play two games of VII that feel meaningfully different, because unless you're doing all of the things every time, it's like playing half of a game.