Metaverse. Old and new urban issues in virtual cities

Recent years have seen the emergence of some early attempts to construct virtual cities, affective utopias or dystopias in an embodied internet, which in some respects loom as the ultimate expression of the neoliberal model applied to the urban (albeit virtual). Although there is an extensive disciplinary literature on the relationship between planning and virtual reality related to the gaming industry, it often avoids questions of values. The observation of some of these early experiences – Liberland Metaverse, Decentraland, Seoul Metaverse, SuperWorld, to name a few – raises important questions and issues that are gradually becoming inescapable for architects, and urban planners, and allows us to make some partial considerations on the risks and potentialities of these early virtual cities.