if you look at what communities are successful in Second Life (sciland, Caledon, Fantazy continent…) you will note that this success don’t depend on massive investment (save buying the land) or one-small-group-of-people-designing-everything-for-everyone-to-aplaude.

Right on the countrary, these communities and lands are made of individua plots and building which form an harmonoius whole. Just exactly the same behaviour which led to the blatant failure of mainland. So what made these communities work?
-In these lands there is a THEME which makes individual initiatives fit together
-In these lands there are RULES on what can be built or not. For instance in Elven lands, builders and landscapers are asked to make a smooth and natural looking transition from plot to plot, and even from sim to sim.
-There is an AUTHORITY to enforce the rules and remove what don’t comply.
-This authority is not cracking down on people, it is FRIENDLY, so that people feel free (in the scope of the theme), and feel this authority as an help, to as a limitation.
-The theme and content (events, talks, roleplay…) is INTERESTING. Not interesting for everybody, of course (this is impossible) but enough to attract a constant and stable community of sane and sociable visitors, dwellers and land owners/renters.
-there is a PROTECTION against griefing, to ensure a pleasant and unspoiled venue in these lands.
There are NO casinos, paedophilia, noise, adds, add farms, malls, night clubs, prostitution, porn, etc. and it was that way far before LL began to forbad these things.

So these communities are flourishing, attracting people, having a social life, events, parties, talks, teachings, etc and, from this, they are successful into raising every month the money needed to maintain the lands ($295 per sim instead of $195 in mainland).

Some of these communities have the equivalent of roads (channels in the Elven Land, railway in Caledon) of their own, operated and maintained by their residents or by their central authorities. Others simply don’t have roads and don’t need any.

This is a striking difference with some “great projects” by only one person having much money, which often result into large, great looking sims, but empty. (like in There.com).

Would LL and their moles be interested into building roads in Elven lands or Sciland? We whould be grateful of your help, surely. But to speak frankly, we whould rather be afraid of it. If you really want to help people building worthy landscapes and communities in SL, don’t lose your time into landscaping empty sims. Rather do one of the following: -fix bugs, inventory loss, naked avs (known litany) -let the JIRA be managed by adults in place of letting BDSM masters bully the worthy contributors -lower the island costs (or lower the difference between mainland and islands) -use a really efficient identity check, so that a griefer or crook ejected from a sim cannot just come back ten minutes later with a new identity -create community spaces and buildings for small or large events (talks, teachings, concerts…) -etc

Take a look at “popular places” in search; all the people are flocking to lame “free” money and sex “clubs”; do you actually think that some pretentious city build is going to compete with that? The sandboxes and welcome areas are also major community hubs, these are the models that actually work and engage the community. In the virtual space the concept of a city just has no real relevance.