City In Georgia Planning Virtual World For Civic Interaction

GamePolitics reports that Decatur, Georgia is looking into the development of a virtual environment to "encourage community networking, improve civic engagement, and promote economic development in the city." They've put out a request for ideas (PDF) on how to adapt a blending of MMOs and social networking to suit a city's civic needs. "The virtual environment should mimic, though not necessarily mirror, the layout and visual aspects of the City within the defined geographic area." They also want it to be avatar-based, friendly to businesses, and have a "fun and intuitive interface."

"encourage community networking"

[NinthAgendaDotCom]

How about like, you know, networking with people in real life? There's too much virtual interaction as it is. I say as I type a comment on a website.

This seems like a horrible idea.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Isn't setting up a virtual version of your city for "civic interaction" tantamount to admitting that the real one is so far from that objective that setting up a virtual one is easier than fixing the real one? I'm all for electronic communication methods, they are loads of fun and sometimes useful; but why would I want my real city to be busy building a fake city when it should be working on the real one?

Now, in the future, I can imagine certain uses of a non-sucky virtual city, see "plot" section here [wikipedia.org].