Sustainability and the City

CHAPTER 7

Virtual Environment

One of the main drivers of the changes that humans have made to the natural environment and that is behind the creation of the human environment is the construction of cities. As they look toward the future, however, the cities of today also have to consider the development of the virtual environment (Kalawsky 1993; Rix, Haas, and Teixeira 2016). In the last decade, the field of virtual technologies (i.e., those that are used to develop imaginary or virtual worlds alongside the real physical world) has grown exponentially. In contrast to the physical world—where physical matter is seen, touched, and ingested—the virtual world is a symbolic one in which computer programs provide functionality and massive amounts of ...