Yeah. I think people saying more realistic interactions would not be fun or popular are lacking in imagination. The real problem with those games is the divorce from reality of bulldozing.
Imagine bulldozing is as expensive, complicated, and despised as in real life.
Then imagine having to fight against infrastructure cost overruns. You play a city building game, and you don't have access to roads (cars haven't been invented) so you want to put rails everywhere. You do that, but then you realise later how expensive and complicated it is to remove some rails to put down roads.
Imagine the game stopping, and telling you that the cost of roads will double when you unpause the game. You'd have to manage putting down more road than you need and the consequences of overreach.
I saw someone playing that way, they could ONLY bulldoze "city services" like roads (so they could replace a road with one with more lanes that fit in the same space, or one with bike/tram lanes) but they could NOT bulldoze zoned properties, and tried their best not to remove even things like police stations, etc.
I think they had a rule saying they could rezone or bulldoze a building that was abandoned; but that of course led to accusations of intentionally forcing buildings to be abandoned (which is a real thing that happens).
Imagine bulldozing is as expensive, complicated, and despised as in real life.
Then imagine having to fight against infrastructure cost overruns. You play a city building game, and you don't have access to roads (cars haven't been invented) so you want to put rails everywhere. You do that, but then you realise later how expensive and complicated it is to remove some rails to put down roads.
Imagine the game stopping, and telling you that the cost of roads will double when you unpause the game. You'd have to manage putting down more road than you need and the consequences of overreach.
It could be super fun.