A few people have mentioned this now, but maybe there should be a way to buy town plots with in-game earned money. This wouldn't really interfere with the donation package of buying town plots either, because that itself is limited to certain people.
Many towns want large builds for their residents to explore, but with the limit on the plots you can have being dependent on the residents, they don't have the ability to do the big builds they want. An option to buy a certain number of plots for a certain price would be nice. It's open to more suggestions on the number of plots and the price. Something like 8 plots for 100k or something, so they would REALLY have to work to get the town to expand without members.