Using Minecraft for Community Participation in Public Space Design

Since 2012, the Swedish company Mojang, the makers of Minecraft, have been collaborating with various partners, including UN-Habitat, on Block by Block, an innovative private-public partnership in which Minecraft is used as a community participation tool in the design of urban public spaces. Minecraft is one of the world’s most popular computer games, with over 100 million users, best imagined as a ‘digital Lego’, in which players build complex structures or compete against each other in community-designed competitions. The event will take the form of a panel discussion, involving experts on public space, Block by Block board members, staff from Mojang, Microsoft and UN-Habitat and implementing partners from Kosovo, Peru and India.