From time to time, the Residents of certain regions of Second Life have come to us with proposals, petitions, or even protests asking us to consider changing the rating in their neighborhoods. While we agree that it is important for Residents to have some control over important decisions affecting the places where they choose to live, thus far our answer has been "Not just yet." Themed regions have been the exception in the past because all residents settled the area as one group.
Instead of acting --ad hoc-- on requests as they arise, Linden Lab has decided that the prudent course of action is to take another step on the road to self governance and implement tools that will allow the Residents of some non-themed regions to decide for themselves what their rating should be, without Linden intervention. Until this functionality is in place, region ratings will remain as they currently stand.
We arrived at this decision after many conversations with concerned Residents. One issue that became clear in these discussions is that much of the interest in changing a rating is driven by a scarcity of available land in Mature-rated areas. This is something we can and will address -- look for details about new M-rated land in the near future.