How about instead of taking away cities/districts you added more. Obviously for the RP aspect you'd want to keep it where the mafia had its beet stories. Like how the judges in 2012 let off connected people in New Orleans for example. This would let bot gang spawn up consistently, you could keep your travel math for flights and wandering block to block, but now if you want to stay in the Midwest (theoretically) you would have St Louis with Chicago and Detroit. New Jersey and possibly Boston with Philly and NY. I'm a southern man and I would personally love to see the Southern states where the mafia did business back in the good ol' dayzndaze. Florida and New Orleans ftfw baybeeeee

This would also allow for the less active people to train their guns consistently. It'd produce more organized takedowns by real players on NPC's. And perhaps it would spawn some good memories for the people takin' part in it all. 

Bot gangs aren't exactly that great to have around. They do a lot of damage to the crews and people's body guards. Also, I am curious how adding more cities would help with lower population of players? This would force people to auth just to prevent the npc crews not out of having enough people to expand with. 

Are you wanting these added cities to just be npc cities? With NPC crews?

Yes

The NPCs show up currently when there is an empty district or city for too long, or if uppers aren't active for at least an hour a week. If we made the NPC crews a constant thing - what punishment would you suggest in place the current one? 

Also it runs the risk of boring people. Durdens, RATs and NPC crews are fun because its low effort kills but also random/varied. 

Another risk is that someone with zero BGs can join, max a gun, then get BGs and go on a rampage. The downsides just dont seem to balance with what we'd get out of this change. 

"With no risk of death, life is just the mechanics of breath" 

This would be a high risk low reward for players with BGs. BG upkeep would be the price paid. Players with no bgs could just lurk and safely pick off free wackstat. 

Plus it'd be like CoD zombies