I don't think I'd describe the title in either case as "provocative" - "challenging" perhaps, and challenging can be a helpful thing to do.

In any case I'd read the titles in both threads as being primarily critical of how things are sometimes done in big cities, as opposed to smaller scale communities. The differences between small scale communities and big cities are in some ways more significant than the differences between big cities or smaller communities in different countries.

And these differences involve some shared problems - and talking about that can help identify solutions that might help, and which other people have tested out for us.

If threads like this are provocative the thing is to be provoked into coming up with useful stuff like that - and some of the responses have in fact done that.