The Metaverse Could Make Cities Greener and Fairer

The Metaverse Could Make Cities Greener and Fairer

On a Tuesday morning in 2022, a researcher named Zaheer Allam sat down to write a paper that would eventually get cited more than 600 times. His subject was the Metaverse, a term that by then had become a punchline. Meta had spent billions building a virtual reality nobody seemed to want. The company’s stock was tanking. Critics called it a solution in search of a problem. But Allam and his co authors Ayyoob Sharifi, Simon Elias Bibri, and David S. Jones saw something different. They saw a tool that might actually fix cities.

Their argument, published in the journal Smart Cities, is not what you expect. It is not about virtual concerts or digital real estate. It is about concrete, steel, traffic, and inequality. The Metaverse, they suggest, could make real cities more sustainable. It could reduce emissions, cut waste, and even distribute resources more fairly. But only if we stop thinking about it as an escape from reality and start thinking about it as a way to manage reality better (Allam et al., 2022).

This is not a prediction. It is a map of what is possible and what could go wrong.

What the Metaverse Actually Does to a City

The authors begin with a simple observation. Cities today are already digital. They run on platforms. Uber moves people. Airbnb moves tourists. Amazon moves goods. This process, which the authors call platformization, has reshaped urban life more than any skyscraper or subway line ever did. But these platforms are fragmented. They compete. They hoard data. They optimize for profit, not for the city as a whole.

The Metaverse, as Allam and his colleagues define it, is different. It is not just another platform. It is a unified digital layer that sits on top of the physical city. Think of it as a digital twin, a perfect virtual copy of every street, building, pipe, and park, updated in real time by sensors, cameras, and satellites. That twin can then run simulations. What happens to traffic if we close Main Street for a farmers market? What happens to air quality if we reroute delivery trucks? What happens to energy use if we dim streetlights on low traffic nights? The Metaverse lets city planners test these changes without spending a dime on construction (Allam et al., 2022).

This is not science fiction. Singapore already has a digital twin called Virtual Singapore. It is a 3D model of the entire city state, fed by data from government agencies, sensors, and private companies. Planners use it to test flood defenses, optimize waste collection, and plan new housing. The difference between Virtual Singapore and the Metaverse is scale and access. The Metaverse would be open to everyone, not just government officials. Citizens could walk through proposed developments. They could see how a new highway would affect their commute. They could argue about trade offs with data, not just opinions.

How the Study Was Done

Allam and his team did not run experiments. They conducted an upper level literature review, which means they read hundreds of papers, reports, and industry documents, then synthesized the findings into a framework. They mapped the emerging products and services of the Metaverse and evaluated them against three goals: environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and social sustainability. Their method is transparent. They list their search terms, their databases, and their inclusion criteria. The result is not a proof. It is a hypothesis, backed by evidence, about what the Metaverse could do if designed correctly.

The Environmental Argument: Less Commuting, More Trees

The most obvious environmental benefit of the Metaverse is reduced travel. If you can attend a meeting in a virtual office that looks and feels like a real conference room, you do not need to drive or fly there. The authors cite estimates that remote work already cuts carbon emissions by millions of tons per year. The Metaverse would make remote work more immersive, which could make it more effective. You would not just be a face on a screen. You would be a body in a room, able to read body language, gesture at whiteboards, and bump into colleagues in the virtual hallway (Allam et al., 2022).

But the bigger opportunity is in urban design. The Metaverse could help cities retrofit themselves for sustainability without the usual disruption. Take energy grids. Most cities waste huge amounts of electricity because they cannot match supply to demand in real time. A digital twin of the grid, updated second by second, could predict demand and adjust supply automatically. The authors point to projects in Barcelona and Amsterdam where digital twins have already reduced energy use by 10 to 20 percent. The Metaverse would scale this up, connecting thousands of buildings into a single intelligent system (Allam et al., 2022).

Then there is waste. Cities generate mountains of trash, much of it from construction and demolition. The Metaverse could help by simulating building materials. Before you pour concrete, you could test a virtual version to see how it holds up, how much it weighs, and how it affects the building's energy efficiency. This is called digital prototyping, and it is already common in aerospace and automotive industries. The authors argue that cities have been slow to adopt it because they lack the data infrastructure. The Metaverse would provide that infrastructure.

The Economic Argument: Cheaper Planning, Fairer Access

Building a city is expensive. A single infrastructure project, like a bridge or a subway line, can cost billions and take decades. Much of that cost comes from mistakes. You dig a tunnel and hit bedrock. You build a road and realize it floods. You zone for housing and then discover nobody wants to live there. The Metaverse could slash these costs by letting planners test everything in simulation first. The authors call this virtual incarnation, the idea that a city can be built, tested, and refined in virtual space before a single shovel hits the ground (Allam et al., 2022).

But the economic benefits go beyond cost savings. The Metaverse could make cities more accessible to people who are currently excluded. Consider public consultation. Today, if a city wants to build a new park, it holds a town hall meeting at 7 PM on a Tuesday. People who work nights, who have children, who cannot afford childcare, or who do not speak the dominant language are effectively shut out. The Metaverse could host consultations at any time, in any language, with visual aids that make proposals understandable to everyone. You do not need to read a 200 page environmental impact report. You can walk through the proposed park in virtual reality and see for yourself how it would look (Allam et al., 2022).

This is not a guarantee. It is a possibility. The authors are careful to note that the Metaverse could also deepen inequality if access is limited to people who can afford VR headsets and high speed internet. But they argue that the technology is already becoming cheaper. Smartphones, which are nearly ubiquitous, can already run basic virtual environments. The question is whether cities will design the Metaverse to be inclusive or exclusive.

The Social Argument: Rebuilding Trust in Public Institutions

This is where the paper gets interesting. Allam and his colleagues argue that the Metaverse could address a crisis that most urban planners ignore: trust. People do not trust their city governments. They do not believe that new developments will benefit them. They suspect corruption, incompetence, or both. This distrust makes it nearly impossible to build anything. Every project gets sued. Every plan gets stalled. Cities become paralyzed.

The Metaverse could help by making the planning process transparent. Imagine a city that publishes a live digital twin of every proposed project. You can see exactly where the money is going. You can track how the project affects traffic, air quality, and property values. You can compare the city's claims against the data. This is not just about accountability. It is about giving people a sense of control. When you can see the evidence, you are more likely to accept the outcome, even if it is not what you wanted (Allam et al., 2022).

The authors cite research on procedural justice, which shows that people care almost as much about the fairness of the decision making process as they do about the outcome. A transparent Metaverse could make the process feel fair. It could also reduce the influence of special interests. If every data point is public, it is harder for developers to hide the true costs of their projects.

What the Research Does Not Prove

Allam and his co authors are not naive. They devote a substantial section of their paper to the risks. The Metaverse could be a surveillance tool. It could track every move you make, every store you visit, every person you meet. The authors warn that this data could be used to manipulate behavior, not just to improve services. They point to the example of China's social credit system, which uses digital surveillance to reward and punish citizens. The Metaverse could make that system more powerful and more invasive (Allam et al., 2022).

There is also the risk of social isolation. If people spend more time in virtual spaces, they might spend less time in real ones. They might stop going to parks, cafes, and community centers. They might lose the casual interactions that build social trust. The authors call this the reconstruction of reality, and they are not sure whether it will be good or bad. It depends on how the Metaverse is designed. If it is designed to complement real life, it could strengthen communities. If it is designed to replace real life, it could weaken them (Allam et al., 2022).

Finally, there is the question of who controls the Metaverse. Meta, the company that popularized the term, is a private corporation. It has a profit motive. It might not prioritize sustainability or fairness. The authors argue that cities need to build their own Metaverses, run by public institutions, not private platforms. But they admit that this is easier said than done. Public institutions are slow, underfunded, and often lack technical expertise.

What This Actually Means

The Metaverse is not a toy. It is not a gimmick. It is a new way of managing the physical world through a digital layer. Allam and his colleagues have laid out the opportunities and the risks. Here is what their research implies for anyone who cares about the future of cities:

• ▸Start with the data, not the hardware. The Metaverse is not about VR headsets. It is about sensors, digital twins, and real time data. Cities should invest in these foundations before they worry about virtual reality experiences. A digital twin of a single neighborhood is more useful than a virtual concert hall that nobody visits.

• ▸Make it public. The Metaverse should be owned and operated by public institutions, not private companies. If Meta controls the Metaverse, it will optimize for profit. If the city controls it, it can optimize for sustainability and fairness. This is not a technical choice. It is a political one.

• ▸Design for inclusion from day one. The Metaverse will only make cities fairer if everyone can access it. That means free public terminals in libraries and community centers. It means support for multiple languages. It means interfaces that work on cheap smartphones, not just expensive headsets. If the Metaverse becomes a luxury good, it will widen inequality, not reduce it.

• ▸Use it to build trust, not just efficiency. The most powerful feature of the Metaverse is transparency. Cities should publish every data point, every simulation, and every decision in a format that citizens can explore. This will be uncomfortable for officials who are used to operating behind closed doors. But it is the only way to rebuild the trust that cities have lost.

• ▸Watch for the dark side. The Metaverse could become a surveillance tool. It could isolate people. It could deepen the power of corporations over public life. The authors are clear: the Metaverse is not inherently good or bad. It is a tool. The outcome depends on how we design it, who controls it, and what values we embed in it.

Allam and his colleagues end their paper with a call for more research. They want to know how the Metaverse will affect human social interactions. They want to know whether virtual cities can satisfy the same psychological needs as real ones. They want to know whether the Metaverse will make us more connected or more alone. These are good questions. But the most urgent question is simpler: Will our cities use the Metaverse to become greener and fairer, or will they let it become another tool for extraction and control? The answer is not written in the code. It will be written in the laws, the budgets, and the public debates that happen in the next five years.