I'll repeat myself again, but I'll try to clear it up even more.
With the exceptions there were, people started abusing it (granted, it was mostly with station spreading). I myself experienced that I was explaining what reasonable spreading and land claiming was and when it was allowed and when it wasn't endlessly. Players kept discussing or ignoring the rules because it wasn't clear, people abused the exceptions that were in place for own towns. That is why all exceptions are taken away and all servers have one set of rules now.
Part of the problem was for example, that in 25k CB the town can grow out of the claimed area. Can you only claim in your area, or can you claim around your town, however far out it spreads.
Fact is, that the 'golden rule of citybuilding' wasn't maintainable because players kept abusing it.
I'm sorry that this one little change in the rules affects your feelings towards this community so much and affects the fun you have playing so much. I used to station spread inside my own town and as a player I wasn't thrilled that I had to change my playing style slightly to obey the rules, but it definitely wasn't a gamechanger for me. But if you really feel that this change in the rules is unacceptable for you, you can always look for other servers to play at. As you have seen, discussion about the rules is possible, we have discussed it here quite a bit now. That doesn't mean that if a rule is being discussed and questioned by one or multiple players, the rule has to be changed, even though the BTPro team is still behind the rule.
Your company won't be reset if you break a rule, server operators will always speak to you about it, trying to get into a conversation, explaining what is against the rules, answer questions about it. Only if you continue to ignore the rules and the operators, you risk a reset (or more). The same applies here, if one or more players don't agree with the rule, it doesn't mean that breaking said rule is then OK.