Opening next May 2010 Shanghai Expo is expected to be one of the major social, cultural and political Chinese appointments of the last few years, if only for the huge sums of money poured into the event and its symbolical significance as the first international expo taking place in a developing Country.

Shanghai Expo will become a platform of exchanges and discussions on social and urban issues such as the environment, pollution, ecology, cultural heritage, Chinese customs, science and technology and the remodeling of communities in the city.

To what extent these RL values can be applied to a virtual environment? Are these issues somehow also relevant in SL and RMB City in the specific?
On-line worlds are not threatened by pollution and ecological alarm, they’re also dispensed with the increasing problem of traffic and lacking of livable places.

Nonetheless, virtual worlds, and RMB City amongst them, are based on an aggregate of people and some shared values, interests and dreams.
The theme of Expo 2010 ‘BETTER CITY, BETTER LIFE‘ shares the same implicit utopian urge incidental to any real and virtual society. In Shanghai as well as in RMB City history and the past blend with progress and the future, ancient values and traditions find their way amongst modern models and new standards of life and Chinese paradigms overlap cosmopolitan issues.

The funny mascot of Shanghai Expo, ‘Haibao’, reminds the Chinese character for ‘people’ (人)(http://www.easytourchina.com/china-specials/emblem-mascot-of-shanghai-expo.htm) and our virtual city is ‘People’s City’, a city built on and made of any individual contributions, made of persons and their dreams.
The only hope we have for a better world is to use our imagination to invent a new one.

Your City is Mine
My City is Yours

“There are no nationalities or borders here; we are all world citizens in a future world where everyone lives his second life and creates his own values.” — China Tracy (RMB City Citizenship Announcement: http://rmbcity.com/community/)