I am a bit of a sceptic about Second Life, but even I recognise that it has huge value for any public body that is planning a new building or redesigning an area. Thanks to Dave Briggs, I came across this useful summary of Birmingham's use of virtual worlds for just these planning processes - http://ideaperformance.com/2009/01/27/birmingham-and-second-life/
Take at look at https://sites.google.com/site/munigov20/ is a coalition of local/municipal governments focused on exploring the use and principles of Web 2.0 in an effort to improve citizen services and communication via technology. We have created this site and its accompanying documents as resources, best practices and the start of a community of like-minded peers who have a common interest in the concepts of 2.0 as they could and do apply to local government. The pages of this site are de...
Take a look at a presentation by Philip Rosedale about the virtual society he founded, Second Life. Whether Second Life or something like it, but better, is in our futures, it is currently an interesting experiment in building a society. And Rosedale seems to understand that and has some fascinating observations about the phenomenon. You can find it at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/the_inspiration_of_second_life.html Norm