eLab City is currently in the planning stages. Construction to begin late 2007.
eLab City will be a two-island sim in Second Life. It is being developed by the University of California, Riverside, Sloan Center for Internet Retailing, for the purpose of studying consumer behavior in virtual worlds. eLab City will be a “live-work-play” community, providing a working laboratory and subject pool for academic research. Most academic sims in Second Life are “virtual campuses” oriented to classroom instruction and course support. There are, however, no academic Second Life projects that study how consumers behave in virtual worlds.
For further details, please visit: http://elabcity.com/