From the early days of the Internet, the dominant discourse about the future of cities has focussed on how new communications technologies would reshape (or replace) urban infrastructures and enhance civic life. David Gelernter imagined software-based "Mirror Worlds" (1991), William Mitchell wrote of the transition to a "City of Bits" (1995), and Nicholas Negroponte evangelized about the empowering nature of "Being Digital" (1995). The development of the Internet and the emergence of digital culture have taken place during a period in which free market ideologies have been on the ascendancy.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the market model would be applied to the development of any new site, whether it is physical, virtual, or a mixture of both.The conversion from public space to private domain, and the shift in emphasis from the public good to individual consumer choice, has attracted less attention than the digital "revolution".

Drawing upon John Hannigan's discussion of theme park architecture in Fantasy City (1998) and Margaret Kohn's documentation of the loss of public space in Brave new neighbourhoods (2005), I discuss urban planning projects that illustrate this transformation (Toronto's Dundas Square and the West Edmonton Mall). I then compare these sites to case studies from the Internet (Cybertown and Active Worlds) to show how the displacement of public space and democratic process by private ownership and control is masked by language, images, and metaphors that are used to construct a misleading facade, or interface.

This interface, I argue, conceals a change in ownership and control, while leading us to believe that civic space has been preserved and enhanced, resulting in a process of erasure through simulation.