Technically it is a double edge sword, unless you somehow know how to replenished if your already have tons of farming districts that bring your civ back up to that point again, so population isn't much of an issue, the problem however is when to use it right, cause your production drops tremendously depending on your amount.

Think of this way "oh crap my city about to get overrunned, you spend 4 pop to get an army up to survive while reinforcements come from the north" is a fair way to do so... you can play  scorche earth and drain the pop down so that once the opponent got the city, they got lots to build up on and an army pillaging the land.

Another double edge sword is rushing that wonder so you bring your stability and other bonuses up, but at the same time your playing catch up with other improvements that you put on the backburner have to come up front, you won't be using that civ pop in a while cause you spend 10 pop to rush that wonder.