SUBDIVISIONS

Sheltered and peaceful community for emigres who want a secluded home space from which to explore the wilder nation outside-- or sterile track homes in a suburb that fails to deliver on the ideal of neighborhood?

Last week, Linden Lab unveiled Blumfield, a planned community region, offering new Residents the chance to buy land and track homes at discount prices. Unsurprisingly, opinion of the project from veteran Residents has been mixed. Taking up the former view is Cyberpunk Community Relations Representative and ex-Homeland Security contractor Satchmo Prototype, who offers his positive appraisal on SLOG in this essay. The latter opinion is forcefully put forth in the new blog of architect and Foucault fan Jauani Wu in an entry here. (The Second Life Herald has a round-up of reaction here.)

Of course, as the in-world journalist, I prefer the three dimensional response from the adorably creepy alien Max Case, who immediately set about building a metallic, bobwire-studded Berlin Wall around the suburb, posting pink flamingos and teddy bears as guards, and a rainbow-colored sign pointing the way outside, through a Checkpoint Charlie for Blumfield citizens. (If they can make it past the bear with the whip and the shotgun, that is.)