After reading through all these posts, I’ve been having a think about an issue which I experienced, relating to prestige and towns, when I expanded Miner’s Bluff (something I had always planned to do, but didn’t have enough plots to do)… anyway…
I started building roads, and when I got close enough to other people’s builds in the area, they were automatically included as part of Miner’s Bluff. I even built a stupidly long road over to Boundmore’s place (at his request) so he would automatically be part of the new town. However, had he not requested it, I could have done it anyway whether he liked it or not, and he would have been part of my town. This, in itself, I see as an exploitable system. You can effectively swallow up a nearby town, or clan, or group of friends, just because you built a bigger town and a road that reaches their border. I have essentially done this exact thing (inadvertently) to 3 builds in the area (2 of which are for currently inactive players), as they were on grounds which I had always planned to use to create a town once I had the plots.
So, I think some of the issues surrounding prestige and who becomes the Mayor of the town stems from this automated collation of connected buildings. If you were to remove the automation part and replace it with an opt-in to form a town, you could decide who was the Mayor of the town at it’s initial creation. The Mayor would of course have the option to pass on their Mayoral rights, at any time, to another player of the town, if they wanted to give it up.
If you also tie this in to a suggestion by @Pseudonym84 regarding Soft Claiming Plot Reservation, as Mayor (or an assignable sub-mayor position), you could then unlock specific plots within this soft claim area for other players to build on, but only if they had opted-in to being part of the town. (adding sub-mayor positions possibly infringes too much on whatever the proposed clan system will be though).
The prestige of your builds is still an essential part as well, as your town collectively is still vying to be the capital of the world, so you’re all working together for the greater good. This could also possibly open up a dual taxation system, where residents of a town have a slightly reduced tax rate when purchasing within the town limits, whereas other visitors are still taxed at the normal rate.
Additionally, in doing this, you can then have neighbouring towns that share an almost immediate border, to be individual towns without one swallowing up the other (and not ending up with the planet eventually turning into one massive all-encompassing city!)