I say it's a matter of perspective
I nuked my culture, going -9,000+ in culture, not once but twice in May for the two FAs. First time I rebuilt the same buildings, second time I was in a new chapter so built new buildings. First time I was halfway thru upgrading a T3 factory so that went on hold. Second time I waited a bit to fully upgrade it before nuking the culture. Was it worth it? Absolutely. I wanted to participate in the FA so I was willing to do it. Would I do the same for other events? It depends. I totally skipped several of the mini events and I'm fine with it because I know I made the choice and I can live with it
Someone will tell me, "but that's you! Other people don't have the luxury of [insert reason here]" - I don't buy it. I made it work for me. You make it work for you. I nuked my culture for the FA; I know personally of people who nuked halflings chapter factories for the FA. Just rebuilt it after that. In the course of remodelling my city during my last two chapter transitions, I deleted two T1 and one T2 factories, all at lv19 (chapter-maxed). I also deleted a lv21 armory. Right now I'm in woodelves, and preparing to lose a few lv21 residences to make space for the guestrace buildings.
In the recent event building rebalancing, lots of people said there's no way they can find a way out from the negative pop/culture. That's total nonsense. It's all about what you are willing to do in order to move forward or get the prize. Some people can't bring themselves to kill even a purple unicorn won 5 chapters ago. Furthermore, by saying "taking out parts of their productive cities" - are people really achieving maximum production efficiency (their usage of goods and supplies are exactly equal to their production) with their current layouts? I highly doubt anyone except the top of the top endgame people can even start to say this. And even if that were the case, couldn't they temporarily scale back their production and consumption so that they could participate in the (any) event? Also, aren't situations like these what stockpiling and spells are for?
Bottom line, what you end up attaining in this game is all down to personal choice. There are some outcomes in life that we have no control over no matter how hard we try, but this game isn't one of them