Will Parisians embrace Second Life?

During my lunch-hour reading I came across an interesting piece on the BBC site about how a Paris residents' association is using the virtual world of Second Life to get the town hall to move ahead with plans to redevelop a central area of the city.

Given the somewhat ethereal nature of Second Life, I'm always on the look-out for good examples that demonstrate the practical use or purpose of this technology. And I think this is one.

Residents are being urged to come up with ideas for a new garden for Les Halles in the centre of Paris, originally a wholesale market destroyed in the 70s to make way for a shopping centre.

The use of Second Life has been introduced by local residents' association Accomplir. They claim that residents haven't been consulted over the gardens, which they say are at the heart of local life. And they're enticing residents to partipate with the lure of a cash prize – 275,000 linden dollars to the contributor of the winning idea! (That's 785 euros or £530 to those of us unfamiliar with the conversion rate for Second Life currency).

I'll be interested to see if they achieve their ultimate objective: "To put pressure on officials to speed up the redevelopment process."

Put that way, the potential benefits of Second Life suddenly seem a bit more tangible...

Comments

[Alex Manchester]

You're absolutely right, Mandy. At it's heart this is all about conceptualisation and visualisation at a fraction of the cost and time. This is a great example of what the 3D web and virtual worlds can be used for.

Forget about the escapism and the constant rise in population or members of Second Life. It's of little interest. Most "members" never come back and only relatively few will ever meet each other, but examples this like city plan are something you can expect to see more of (and not just in Second Life).

[Vincent Sorel]

We can note that the French seem to be embracing social media quite a lot. Not only France is one of the biggest blogging country in the world, but also Second life.

You all probably know that the presidential elections are coming soon in France, and several debates between major politicians (none of the actual candidates as far as I know) and supporters have also been held on Second Life.