Municipal staff for the city of Boston, MA are planning not only to replicate several famous city landmarks in the virtual world of Second Life, but to also make many of the city's services available there as well. The space would be used for residents to speak to city councillors and for neighborhood groups to hold meetings. The efficiency of doing these things in a virtual world versus the real one may be questionable, but that's something the planners themselves have acknowledged:
City officials working on the project concede that paying city bills or visiting with officials at a virtual City Hall in Second Life may not strike everyone as more effective than more conventional interactions, like paying through the city's website or sending e-mail to city councilors. But they say the novelty of Second Life could entice more people to participate in real civic life. The virtual city could be used to promote tourism, or to gauge public reaction to proposed new developments, they said.
They've set aside another six months to finish development and plan on making the virtual environment an ongoing project for local Emerson College. The focus here is on attracting youth to the city and making Boston as much of a technology hub as possible. Other cities will surely be watching to see if it pays off.
One of the benefits of holding community meetings in Second Life is that you don't have to risk physical proximity with some of the more... unusual elements of a community.
Here in Houston, there's a group of people who regularly attend Houston City Council meetings claiming to be... let's see... one says he's a Senator... the other says he's President of something... essentially, they're Loonies. Stark raving mad loonies.
If I remember correctly, one threw eggs at someone during his rant, which are often transcribed as them having talked for the extent of their time at the podium. (aka "They ranted about stuff I don't care to transcribe... I'm going for a smoke... see ya.") But they're a hoot to watch on the community channel when everything else is dull.
Other cities probably have similar loons.
I'm sure there's laws and regulations and codes dictating that there have to be public meetings, but moving more and more to virtual discussion can offer a bit more security and the ability for citizens to tune out the disruptive elements on their own (while the city councilfolks are obligated to listen, perhaps using management tools to "manage" those sigma-six loonies a bit better)
One huge downside is access to virtual civic meetings will be limited to those who have computer access during the times when the meetings take place. Though it may be hard to beleive there are many households that still can not afford to own a computer, or own one powerful enough to run the second life client.
If Official City meetings are held and are only made accessible through the medium of second life, than people who normally would have been able to go to their civic meetings in person will now be excluded from their own local goverment instead of included.
this could potentially attract more affluent attendees to civic functions but also excluding many underpriveledged members of the community at the same time.
While "managing" loonies may seem an advisable goal (and it is) the *exclusion* of loonies from the process is a bad thing, at least according to the theories the US is founded upon.
Environmentalists used to be loonies (and some still are); today environmental concerns are considered a legitimate aspects of governmental discussions of land use.
Those who stood against slavery were loonies (or worse, traitors to a way of life) here in the united states. Of course not all loonies are so well remembered.
I will fully admit that the vast number of those labeled "loonies" at your council meetings are not bringing *anything* valuable to the table. Those who have time to attend such meetings tend to be outsiders. Attempts to exclude them from the process do risk excluding those who do bring something that today is considered crazy, but will be identified in the future as valuable insight.