Block to the future: UN uses Minecraft building game to help locals decide how their towns will be developed
- Game developers are recreating the environments
- Residents will get the chance to walk through the virtual towns and offer suggestions
The UN is turning to an unlikely source to help it find ways of regenerating some of the world's poorest regions.
Development plans for 300 locations around the globe are being modelled in online computer game Minecraft.
Called Block by Block, the programme allows residents to help decide how the locations will be adapted and grow, the BBC reports.
It is part of a collaboration between Minecraft-maker Mojang and UN Habitat.
Regeneration: The Undugu Playground in Nairobi is one of the first to be helped by the scheme
Urban locations will be recreated on computer using Minecraft allowing residents to take a virtual tour.
In the game, players are able to walk through a whole number of worlds - each built of cubes - with no specific goals, but they are able to create things and adapt their envirnoment as they go.
Playing the game involves stacking the cubes to build structures or breaking them down into their raw materials to create other objects.
Those to be affected by the UN regeneration will also be able to change the model and help decide how money should be spent.
One of the first places that is being focused on as part of a pilot for Block by Block is the Undugu playground - part of the Kibera slum region on the outskirts of Nairobi.
'We'll be putting it into the game so people can walk around and feel like it's as real life as possible,' Lydia Winters, community liaison manager at Mojang told the BBC.
The developers will model urban areas in need of regeneration and then use the came to plan changes
Undugu has been recreated on computer by Minecraft modelling firm Fyre UK, and residents will soon be able to visit thier virtual home and to see the UN's plans to regenerate it.
The ease with which the real world can be modelled in the relatively simple Minecraft environment led UN Habitat to approach the developers over the project, said Ms Winters.
By 2016, 300 of the areas UN Habitat plans to remodel will be recreated in the game.
'It's bringing decision makers together with the youth to all decide on this common ground for public spaces around the world,' said Ms Winters.
The project details were revealed at the Minecon conference held in Paris from 24-25 November.
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