Virtual Planning

In the interview, Eric describes how they used Second Life in community planning meetings:

"At each workshop we brought about fifteen community members together in a room, and they each had a laptop that we supplied. What they were looking at was a virtual reproduction of the park in Second Life. We built the context around the park—the library, and the houses around it—and left the park space open, as a big empty lot of grass. So first we would all walk through that tabula rasa of the site, and then we went through a brainstorming process, where people would throw out ideas [for what they wanted to see there], like a basketball court, a big sculpture, or seating, and we had a designer on hand who created those things on the fly."