Neal Stephenson refers to these settlements as 'burbclaves' in 'Snowcrash', and he extrapolates further that they're parts of franchised nation-states with names like 'Mr Lee's Greater Hongkong' and 'Nova Sicilia' (he even posits one for white supremacist refugees from the old South Africa).

I am not laying responsibility for the future of humanity's virtual endeavours at the feet of Stacey Spiegel and Rodney Hoinkes (respectively the artist and designer behind 'Crossings') - that would be ridiculous. But the foregoing does have a somewhat ironic congruence with the quotation used in the 'Concepts' part of the 'Crossings' web site:

".....any art work is the result of the forces manifest in
the social and economic structure and mirrored by man.
Art may often appear bare of ideological clarity in the
sense of a social program. However the artist is not a
propragandist but more than any other person, a
seismograph of his time and its direction....."

(Moholy-Nagy, 'Vision in Motion')

"This project is not a celebration of its technological
sophistication or an acceptance of the values currently
attributed to virtuality. Rather, it is an aesthetic
experience of information space, evoking an informed
dialogue around the potential of 3-dimensional
interactivity in the World Wide Web."

It is a shame that the above mentioned dialogue is not to be found on the web site - it would be of great interest and I would go so far as to suggest that it should be a priority to make such information available on the site. It is important for creators in any discipline to acknowledge and attempt to deal with the societal issues provoked by their work. In the instance of 'Crossings' and 'WAXWeb' the very novelty and specific technological complexity of their endeavours goes some way in favour of explaining their present social partiality.

However, the issue of access persists and is addressed here: