The Citizen’s Right to the Virtual City: Urban Governance in the Metaverse Through an Exploration of Decentraland

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ABSTRACT Many aspects of contemporary lifestyles—working, socializing, shopping, and consuming entertainment—are digitally mediated. Further, physical spaces are now mediated by technologies to the extent that attempts to understand physical space are incomplete without considering digital and virtual layers. This trend towards hybridity has been accelerated by recent notions of digital twins and the metaverse. This article investigates the intersection—and resulting friction—of the formational and operational processes of physical and virtual spaces. This begins with the relationship between authorities and individuals throughout city-making practices. This is first considered through the agency of people in decision-making processes, namely citizens’ right to the city, right to the digital city, and the extension of these rights to the virtual city. It then examines the governance structures within gaming worlds to gain insights into active sites of change that parallel the metaverse. The evolution of the Internet is then discussed through the lens of 3D representations of digital content, which includes the introduction of the metaverse. A case study of Decentraland, a popular virtual city in the metaverse, is then presented and used to compare the governance structures and city-making process within virtual worlds to those in the real world. This culminates in renewing Lefebvre’s call for the citizens’ right to the city, to be inclusive of virtual worlds.