Experiments with public planning and architecture classes are now being conducted in Second Life, the popular online 3-D virtual world.
Landing Lights Park
A recent article in the online journal Archinect, Architecture's Second Life http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=47037_0_23_0_M describes the attempt to involve the borough of Queens in contributing online to the future design of a real park in their neighborhood near LaGuardia - Landing Lights Park.
According to the blog post "3D Wiki for Landing Lights Park"
http://nyls.blogs.com/demoisland/2006/01/3d_wiki_for_lan.html
"This works by allowing people to arrange and save the location of 3D park elements (benches, walkways, gazebos, trees, etc.) on a scaled-down map of the park (see this Park Planner Flash game as a simpler 2D precedent)."
Evidently Landing Lights Island originated at a SecondLife Community Convention held October 2005 at New York Law School, according to the Democracy Island wiki
http://democracyisland.pbwiki.com/Landing%20Lights%20Island
Production of Architecture Class
In the same article, Architecture's Second Life http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=47037_0_23_0_M
a project of 4th year students of architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm was described in which they created LOL Architects, the world's largest virtual architecture office, in Second Life.
According to the Production of Architecture Class description,
http://www.unrealstockholm.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page, "With the aid of 3D tools bundled into an pervasive on-line platform called Second Life we will formulate limitations and possibilities for the production of architecture."
By using Second Life, the class hoped to formulate the "limitations and potentials for the production of architecture in a world where the boundaries between representation and reality are blurred. "
Tor Lindstrand, RITS professor and founder of LOL, talks about the evolving impact of using Second Life with his students:
"This semester will be different, more about social networks. We are using The Office as a sort of open university, connecting schools and organisations to share the space with us."