Second Life is a three-dimensional online virtual world that allows users to interact with each other using avatars. Eric Gordon, a professor at Emerson College, and Gene Koo, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, won a MacArthur Foundation grant for their approach to using Second Life as a community planning tool. In an interview in Metropolis, Gordon talks about the shortcomings of the traditional planning approach using architects’ plans:
The typical two-dimensional plans assume that the people viewing them have some understanding of architecture or urban planning — they adopt a professional discourse and bring it to a lay community, without enough thought into how to communicate abstract spatial ideas in a way that people can relate to.
Gordon also talks about his experience using Second Life to plan a neighborhood park and applications of technology to support a master-planning effort in Boston’s Chinatown. Link to full story in Metropolis.
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