While I understand and agree with why it's there, I find that it is both redundant and inhibits game play. I think the distance should be reduced to 6 or 7 tiles, max.

1- We already have to pay for new cities, and it's not like we're cranking out the gold in the first place. I know that some of the goody huts provide a decent amount of gold, but those are in no way guaranteed. Why limit something that is already limited? If you think that lowering the 'can't build here' radius would mess it up, you could just charge more for the cities, or reduce the amount of gold gained from huts. In addition the game is focusing on resources that turn into research, food, and gold, so even if we DID city spam, it would get us nowhere unless there was a resource node every two feet (which there isn't.) Who other than a bad AI would city spam?

2- You can now build on resource nodes that are now inside your border, but I have no idea when my border is going to grow outward to encompass resources. If i build next to them, i can use them once i build the needed building, but what about the ones 4 or 6 tiles away. Am I ever going to get to use those? Can you effect the rate in which it moves out? Is it based on city size or something else? There are no indicators showing when my border will expand, it just seems to do it on it's own. Maybe this is more of a lack of information thing, but being able to build cities closer would alleviate this. Being able to control into which city resources go would help too. Right now if i see a nice little spot that has 2 or 3 good resources, I'll go ahead and build a city there. But I quickly find that i can't specialize a city that has 3 different resources going into it. While i would LOVE to have a city focused on materials, metal, gold, and what not, it is not possible right now. Directing resource flow would be much appreciated.