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Urban Planning (ISSN: 2183–7635)
2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342
https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v7i2.5229
Article
Minecraft and Playful Public Participation in Urban Design
James Delaney
The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London, UK; james.delaney@blockbyblock.org
Submitted: 31 December 2021 | Accepted: 11 May 2022 | Published: 28 June 2022
Abstract
Digital networks are transforming the way in which our built environment is planned, designed, and developed. Whilst
many have heralded this technology as a solution to the problems of citizen engagement and participation in planning and
design processes, the state of public participation in this field still arguably leaves much to be desired. In the last decade,
academics and practitioners have explored the possibilities of 3D, multi‐user, digital environments in planning and urban
design contexts. These “inhabited virtual spaces,” where stakeholders are represented through digital avatars, hold the
possibility of engaging a much wider audience in participatory processes, creating a more democratic and bottom‐up pro‐
cess, and improving the outcome of community consultations. These multi‐user environments can take many forms—
and among the most promising are game environments. The benefits of using play and games in creative tasks and
decision‐making have been widely recorded, leading to the developing field of “serious games,” games which have been
designed to accomplish a serious task. Despite this, there has been a reluctance to entertain the idea of appropriating
more commercial and widely played games for serious tasks, rather than designing ones from scratch. One game in partic‐
ular, Minecraft, has shown promising results as part of a participatory design methodology pioneered by UN‐Habitat and
the Block by Block Foundation. Through an analysis of this program, I will explore how the videogame Minecraft might be
used as an innovative tool to improve public participation in urban design, whilst offering a virtual alternative to traditional
models of consultation.
Keywords
city‐making; co‐design; games; geogames; participatory approaches; playful city; public participation; urban planning
Issue
This article is part of the issue “Gaming, Simulations, and Planning: Physical and Digital Technologies for Public
Participation in Urban Planning” edited by Andrew Hudson‐Smith (University College London) and Moozhan Shakeri
(University of Twente).
© 2022 by the author(s); licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu‐
tion 4.0 International License (CC BY).
1. Introduction
It is widely accepted that public participation in urban
planning and design is a good thing (Abbot, 1996). Not
only does it help to create inclusive, accessible cities
and public spaces, but it is a democratic right of citi‐
zens to be involved in how their cities are planned and
designed (Sewell & Coppock, 1977). “Consultation, com‐
munication, and participation” have been at the fore‐
front of planning discourse for over 60 years, and yet the
level and quality of public participation still leave much
to be desired (Hudson‐Smith, 2003, p. 109). Balancing
the needs of multiple stakeholders, communicating effec‐
tively between professionals and laypersons, and engag‐
ing with all social groups in any community are just
some of the problems facing public participation in
urban design.
In recent decades, the leading response to the chal‐
lenges of community consultation has come from infor‐
mation communication technology, or ICT. Digital solu‐
tions to these challenges come in many different forms,
ranging from computer‐aided design (CAD) visualisations
and flythroughs to online discussion forums and digital
questionnaires. This article will focus on virtual interac‐
tive environments, which can offer valuable solutions to
the issues of visualisation, engagement, and participa‐
tion in design consultations. Whilst existing research has
focused on the possibilities of “serious games”—games
Urban Planning, 2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342 330
designed for a purpose other than entertainment—little
attention has been paid to the opportunities of using
existing commercial games. This article focuses on one
videogame in particular, Minecraft, which is uniquely
equipped for use in participatory design processes.
Although Minecraft has been central to a long‐running
and highly successful program of public participatory
design called Block by Block, there has been little crit‐
ical analysis or academic enquiry of Minecraft’s useful‐
ness in relation to the wider intellectual traditions of
urban design and game studies. I believe that bridging
this research gap can help to realise the game’s full poten‐
tial in the field of urban design.
The aim of this article is to understand the potential
of Minecraft as a valid and useful platform for delivering
public participatory processes in urban design by answer‐
ing the following research questions:
• Can Minecraft be used to communicate with and
engage new audiences in urban design processes?
• What does Minecraft offer over existing digital
tools? What are its advantages and disadvantages?
• Why is Minecraft useful? What characteristics and
features of the game lend themselves to this par‐
ticular use?
• What can Minecraft offer to participatory pro‐
cesses in a Covid‐19 and post‐Covid‐19 world?
To answer these questions, I will start with a brief ana‐
lysis of the existing use of Minecraft in public participa‐
tion in urban design, and how this relates to the wider
intellectual traditions of play and game studies. From
here, I developed my own methodology for public partic‐
ipation with Minecraft, before demonstrating and eval‐
uating this methodology via a digital workshop inside
the game.
2. Public Participation in Urban Design
The idea of citizen participation originated in the
1960s with the advocacy planning movement in the US
(Kurzman, 2000). Two key approaches to participatory
design derived from this movement; the first, devel‐
oped in the US, can be categorised as a “bottom‐up’’
movement with the aim of empowering citizens
and democratising the design process, as developed
by Arnstein (1969) in her article “Ladder of Citizen
Participation.” In Scandinavia in the 1970s, a “top‐down”
approach to participatory design took hold, striving
towards a quality of design that better served its users
(Spinuzzi, 2005). The publication of Arnstein’s seminal
article “Ladder of Citizen Participation” in 1969 coin‐
cided with the release of the Skeffington Report in the UK
(Ministry of Housing and Local Government, 1969). This
was the first attempt to set out a systematic approach
to community involvement in UK planning, influencing
an entire generation of activists, planners, and design‐
ers. The report divided the public into two categories:
joiners (those interested in local issues and likely to par‐
ticipate in societal matters) and non‐joiners (those who,
although affected by planning decisions, are unwilling or
unable to register their opinions). Fifty years later, the
challenge of engaging society’s “non‐joiners” is still at
the forefront of citizen participation discourse.
Though revolutionary at the time, citizen participa‐
tion is now commonly accepted as a key part of the urban
design and management process by governments and
local authorities. It is also widely agreed that the contin‐
uing growth and increasing density of cities demand the
provision of high‐quality public spaces which are “safe,
accessible, healthy and sustainable” (Gehl, 2010, p. 68).
To create such spaces, urban planners and designers
must consider the needs and interests of different stake‐
holders, in particular the “end‐user” of those spaces
(Amado et al., 2009).
A less‐discussed challenge of public participation
in urban design is that of youth involvement. Young
people are under‐represented in consultations of all
kinds, and their exclusion from decision‐making pro‐
cesses often leaves this demographic socially and polit‐
ically marginalised (Chawla et al., 2005). Despite more
recent efforts from practitioners to include children in
public participation (Bornat & Shaw, 2019; Tan, 2019;
Wood et al., 2019), this remains a significant challenge
to all stakeholders in participatory processes. The cities
we design and build now will be inherited by today’s
youth, and so there is a certain irony that this group
is so often excluded from decision‐making processes in
urban design.
The ICT revolution has transformed the way in which
both individuals and communities communicate, inter‐
act, and engage. This shift in methods of communication
has generated both a need and opportunity to change
the way in which we engage and invite the participation
of the people that the built environment serves (Kohn,
2015). Having evolved from the early days of CAD visuali‐
sations and e‐government, contemporary discourse on
digital tools for participatory design and planning can
be separated into two main categories: 2D platforms,
such as online discussion forums, and 3D platforms, for
instance, virtual reality environments.
3. Play the City
We are only human when at play. (Schiller, 1794,
Letter XV)
The history of using games and play for serious tasks
is rich, as is the literature that this idea stands on. Our
philosophical understanding of games and play has been
elaborated on by many thinkers—Schiller’s sentiment is
echoed by Huizinga’s (1938) Homo Ludens, in which he
presents play not as an aspect of culture, but culture
itself as a manifestation of play. Caillois’ (1958) Man,
Play and Games and Piaget’s (1962) Play, Dreams and
Imitation in Childhood also offer a perspective on games
Urban Planning, 2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342 331
and play in relation to philosophy, sociology, and psychol‐
ogy, opening up a wide range of possible uses for games
in real‐life tasks.
The importance of play in creative processes was
deeply appreciated by the Bauhaus, Weimar Germany’s
iconic modernist school. One of the school’s professors,
László Moholy‐Nagy played a crucial role in understand‐
ing the relationship between play and creativity—and
the importance of maintaining the spirit of play that
is lost in adulthood. The work of Moholy‐Nagy (1947),
among others, identifies play as one of the most impor‐
tant companions of creativity, and an essential element
of the creative problem‐solving process.
Given the value of play and games in creative pro‐
cesses and decision‐making, it is unsurprising that prac‐
titioners have sought to incorporate play into urban
design processes. Design thinkers and theorists have
looked at the relationship between games and spaces,
conceptualising a form of “ludic architecture” (Walz,
2010), whilst practitioners have published handbooks
and guides to the incorporation of games into archi‐
tecture and planning processes (Dodig & Groat, 2019).
Tan’s (2019) Amsterdam‐based practice, “play the city,”
leads the field in developing game‐based solutions to
urban design and planning consultations. Whilst her
team has experimented with a range of game types, most
projects are analogue games such as board games and
card games, rather than digital games (Tan, 2019). Digital
games for public participatory processes are usually in
the form of “serious games,” games designed for pur‐
poses other than pure entertainment. These have proven
popular with researchers who develop their own serious
games in response to the challenges of public participa‐
tion in urban design (Ahlqvist & Schlieder, 2018; Scholten
et al., 2017). Whilst serious games enable researchers
to directly address the problems they are attempting
to solve, their success is often limited by the logisti‐
cal and financial difficulty of developing a good quality,
enjoyable videogame. The use of commercially devel‐
oped videogames has not been seriously considered as
an alternative to serious games, though the use of games
such as Minecraft to research a wide range of issues
has started to change this trend (Delaney, 2019; Pearson,
2019; Tan, 2019).
4. Minecraft
Notch hasn’t just built a game, he’s tricked 40 million
people into learning to use a CAD program. (Sumter
in Cheshire, 2012)
The easiest way to describe Minecraft is as a form of “dig‐
ital Lego.” It is a sandbox game, an open world without a
pre‐determined course for players to follow. The player
makes up their own rules and can play the game in
any way they wish. It is also a voxel world. Voxels are
3D pixels—The entire Minecraft universe is set on a
3D grid and made up of blocks that can be placed or
destroyed by the player. Crucially, players can animate
these blocks, and add characters and objects, all of which
the player can interact with. The versatility of Minecraft
allows new games and fully interactive experiences to
be created within the game, which challenges us to con‐
sider Minecraft as a game design tool rather than a game
itself—or, as Sumter (Sumter in Cheshire, 2012) of the
MIT Media Lab describes, a CAD program.
Having been released in 2009, Minecraft is now the
most successful videogame in history, with over 480 mil‐
lion players worldwide and 112 million monthly active
players (Bailey, 2019). Minecraft’s consistent growth
since its release in 2009 demonstrates a long‐lasting
appeal which is retaining the game’s loyal fanbase, whilst
also attracting a growing young audience. Thanks to
its versatility, Minecraft has been used as part of an
innovative global public space program called Block
by Block, a non‐profit organisation and partnership
between Mojang, the creators of Minecraft, Microsoft,
and UN‐Habitat. Block by Block uses Minecraft as a com‐
munity participation tool in urban design, with a focus on
poor urban communities in developing countries. Block
by Block’s Minecraft methodology sees the game as
central to a community engagement process, whereby
workshop participants design and build their ideal public
space inside the game. A consolidated Minecraft model
containing the most popular design ideas is then pre‐
sented to local government and planners who trans‐
late the Minecraft model into a final plan. The Block
by Block Foundation then funds the building of the
public space according to this plan, making it the only
project in the world where Minecraft‐designed projects
are built in reality. Since the first trial in 2012, over
100 projects have been completed in 30 locations around
the globe. This program is also the subject of the only
literature which discusses Minecraft as a public partici‐
pation tool in urban design (Delaney, 2019; von Heland
& Westerberg, 2015), which, despite the success of the
program, remains limited.
In recent years, the role of architecture and archi‐
tects in the design of video games has been given much
attention; game developers have sought the advice and
assistance of trained architects and architectural histo‐
rians to create increasingly more convincing and engag‐
ing virtual environments (Saga, 2015). On the other hand,
little attention has been paid to how video games and
game developers might benefit the field of architec‐
ture. The Bartlett School of Architecture’s “Videogame
Urbanism” unit is a rare example of this. Led by architec‐
tural design studio You+Pea, this research unit promotes
the use of videogames in architectural education and is
concerned with how the production and play of games
can provoke and assist conversations about urban issues
in the real world (You+Pea, 2019).
Minecraft is often cited when the intersection of
videogames and architecture is discussed; as a game
primarily about “building,” it has an obvious con‐
nection to the field. However, when discussed, the
Urban Planning, 2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342 332
game’s mechanics and technical properties are rarely
mentioned. From my own experience using Minecraft,
I hypothesise that there are several characteristics of the
game which make it a valid and successful tool for urban
design in the context of citizen participation.
Firstly, Minecraft is an adept, accessible, and effec‐
tive tool for visual communication. It is quick to learn,
easy to use, and, most importantly, can be used by pro‐
fessionals and non‐professionals alike. Unlike many exist‐
ing design and visualisation tools, Minecraft does not dis‐
criminate between those with architectural training and
those without—an essential factor in the making of any
open and democratic design consultation. Not only does
Minecraft allow participants to easily see and engage
with the content created by professionals, but it provides
them with the agency to adapt that content and submit
their own ideas and proposals in a 3D form. The flexible
and adaptive nature of the game makes it easy to test and
change proposals: Nothing is permanent in Minecraft
and the speed with which such changes can be made con‐
tributes to its strength as a visualisation and design tool.
Even those who are entirely unfamiliar with the game
can easily be taught during a short teaching session, as
proven by the methodology employed by the Block by
Block program, which I will discuss later.
Another benefit to Minecraft’s use in architectural
design is that it offers a new way of designing and con‐
structing within a digital workspace. When a user builds
in Minecraft, they do so from the perspective of their
avatar, a virtual character that represents the player
inside of the game. All interactions within a Minecraft
world must be done so through this avatar; to build a
wall, you need to walk up to where you want the wall and
place the blocks in front of you. Although this first‐person
view is a common interface for players to use in video
games, it is rarely used in design software and profes‐
sional digital tools. On the other hand, architects using
CAD have a “birds‐eye” view. As a result, it is extremely
easy to lose a sense of scale or human perspective with
traditional design software, whereas Minecraft users are
entirely immersed in the environment they are designing,
moving through their designs as they create them.
The “multiplayer” feature of the game allows users
to access the same virtual environment remotely, from
anywhere in the world, and interact with the environ‐
ment in real‐time. For instance, a change made by one
user will be seen by all other users in the same envi‐
ronment without delay. This kind of responsive technol‐
ogy does exist in the professional field, with software
such as BIM (building information modelling), however,
Minecraft also allows users to view the avatars of other
users as they adapt the environment. This makes collab‐
orative design in Minecraft highly effective, as evidenced
by projects like BuildTheEarth, with more than 210,000
people worldwide participating in one Minecraft mega‐
project (BuildTheEarth, 2020).
Minecraft is also unique in its offer of a playful
approach to design. Whilst most digital design tools
have been designed specifically to create technical draw‐
ings, there is little consideration for conceptualization
or experimentation of design ideas in a playful man‐
ner. The links between design and play are well docu‐
mented; play is a natural mechanism for humans to solve
problems—albeit whilst enjoying the activity at the same
time. The similarity of the nature of play with real‐life
situations has generated a whole field of study, led by
thinkers such as Johan Huizinga and Jean Piaget, which
looks at how game and play can complement our real‐life
tasks. The concept of “playful design” is something that
all Minecraft users are familiar with; Minecraft is a sand‐
box game without instructions, and when left without
instruction the player is forced to come up with creative
solutions to the design problems that face them in their
own game world.
Finally, Minecraft allows users to create a narrative
in and around the environments they build. Existing
digital tools require users to create their designs on
a blank digital canvas; prior to the user’s interaction
with the program, there is no existing context or envi‐
ronment. Conversely, Minecraft users design and build
within a universe which has existing environmental fea‐
tures and assets; for instance, a day/night cycle allows
players to experience their designs in changing lighting
and weather conditions which roughly match real‐life
environments. Players can also add characters, animals,
written books, and other content into their environ‐
ments which they can adapt and interact with. When
used in this way, Minecraft becomes a narrative‐based
design tool that facilitates the creation of inhabited, liv‐
ing digital spaces rather than the inoperative and unre‐
sponsive 3D models which are the product of traditional
design software.
Inevitably, there are limitations to using Minecraft
in a consultation process. Minecraft was not designed
to be used in this way and the game’s low resolution
makes it ineffective for producing technical models or
detailed proposals. There is also the possibility of dis‐
traction; younger children may struggle to focus on a
set task inside a gameplay environment. The use of
Minecraft also risks the potential segregation of differ‐
ent age groups; rather than mediating between older
and younger participants, older participants may be lim‐
ited by their technical competence, whilst younger par‐
ticipants who are more familiar with Minecraft, or game
environments, in general, would dominate the process.
5. UCLCraft
To test these assumptions, I designed my own Minecraft
participatory design workshop. Due to the Covid‐19 sit‐
uation, it was not possible for me to design a work‐
shop that was directly comparable with Block by Block’s
in‐person workshops—Mine would have to be a virtual
workshop rather than a physical one. My workshop was
of an experimental type, with a purely speculative design
brief. My primary interest was how participants engaged
Urban Planning, 2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342 333
with the Minecraft tool, more so than what they ended
up building with it.
For my workshop, University College London’s (UCL)
Main Quad was used as the context for a speculative
design brief, to create an outdoor learning space inside
the quad itself. This site was chosen to allow comparison
between the responses of participants who were totally
unfamiliar with the Quad with those who were familiar
with it, such as UCL members. From this, I could investi‐
gate the nature of a form of “crowd‐sourced” participa‐
tory design, including participants from anywhere in the
world instead of exclusively local participants. It is also a
well‐documented space that participants who were unfa‐
miliar with it could easily research and find online refer‐
ences. Thirdly, the Quad itself is currently home to the
Main Quad Temporary Pop‐Up (Figure 1), a five‐year facil‐
ity providing additional learning space in the heart of the
UCL campus, giving some real‐life relevance to the spec‐
ulative brief. Finally, when built at a 1:1 scale (where one
Minecraft block is equal to one metre), the Quad is an
ideal size—big enough to accommodate interesting and
detailed proposals, but small enough so that it would not
take participants too long to build their designs.
Having selected my site, the first step was to build
the existing Main Quad in Minecraft. This was done by
importing a scaled satellite image of the Quad as a flat
layer and then building upwards using photographic ref‐
erences. The use of community‐made building tools such
as “WorldEdit” greatly sped up the process, allowing for
sections of the build to be copied and pasted, and for
one side of the build to be mirrored due to its symmetri‐
cal design. The build (Figure 2) was complete after a few
hours, after which point I could set up the workshop envi‐
ronment itself—a Minecraft server.
A Minecraft server is a multi‐player virtual envi‐
ronment which can accommodate multiple users in
the same digital space, each of whom can access the
server entirely remotely. In the process of setting up
a Minecraft server, the server operator can determine
how the environment is laid out, how users can inter‐
act with that environment, and the rules which those
users are bound to. Assuming that most of the work‐
shop participants would be strangers (to myself and each
other), it was important that each participant would
have their own model to work on, which would be pro‐
tected from others to avoid any “griefing” (destruction
of Minecraft environments by another player). Despite
this, I still wanted participants to be able to see each
other’s designs and have the option to work in groups
on a single model if they chose to. To achieve this, I cre‐
ated a “plots” system, dividing the Minecraft world into
a grid of plots (Figure 3). Each participant would be auto‐
matically assigned their own plot upon logging in, which
would then be populated by the pre‐built model of the
UCL Main Quad. Participants were not able to build on
other people’s plots unless consent had been given by
that person in order to collaborate.
The workshop was open for five days and the server
was live 24/7. All of the information required for users
to take part was included in the server itself so that
participants could drop in at any time to initiate their
design—and could also leave at any time (with the server
automatically saving their progress). By advertising on
a number of platforms, I hoped to attract a range of
participants—who may or may not be familiar with the
Main Quad, who may or may not have a background in
architecture and urban design, and who may or may not
be at all familiar with Minecraft.
Figure 1. UCL’s Main Quad Temporary Pop‐Up. Source: UCL (2018).
Urban Planning, 2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342 334
Once participants joined the server, they would
“spawn” in a plot at the centre of the Minecraft world.
As well as the Main Quad recreation, this area contained
information on how to navigate the server, the design
brief, and information about the original Quad itself.
Whilst the workshop brief was designed to be open‐
ended, I introduced some basic rules restricting partic‐
ipants’ building choices within their plot. Any changes
to the existing Main Quad build were disabled, on the
grounds of the Quad being Grade I and II listed. This
forced participants to build inside of the Quad grounds,
rather than editing any of the buildings.
The Minecraft server had been programmed to track
a number of data points from each participant, such
as the number of participants who joined, the times at
which they joined, how long they spent on the server,
and how many times they returned. In order for users to
be assigned a plot and start building, they were required
to complete an automated questionnaire first, which was
designed to establish their experience with Minecraft,
their familiarity with the Main Quad, and whether they
had any formal training in architecture, urban design, or
a related field. Of the 105 users who joined the server,
72 completed the initial questionnaire, and can therefore
be considered participants.
The data from the questionnaire (Figure 4) shows
that the vast majority of participants had no architectural
or urban design training, were not familiar with the UCL
Main Quad, and were already familiar with Minecraft.
Only three of the participants were Minecraft novices,
10 were familiar with the Quad, and 10 had an architec‐
tural or urban design background. The questionnaire also
showed an age range of 12 to 49 across participants, with
an average age of 18. The majority of participants said
they were from the US (14.4%), followed by the UK (9%),
with the rest from 21 other countries.
Throughout the workshop, screenshots were taken
of participants’ designs as they were being built
(Figure 5). There was an impressive variety and quality
of the Minecraft builds, with most participants making
a clear effort to engage with the brief and design seri‐
ous proposals.
Once participants were finished with their design,
they were prompted to fill out another automated ques‐
tionnaire, recording their experience of using Minecraft.
Of the 72 participants who filled out the initial question‐
naire, 40 submitted responses to the final questionnaire
having completed their designs. Responses to most ques‐
tions were almost unanimous, with all participants say‐
ing “yes” (with a small number of “maybe”) to the fol‐
lowing questions:
• Did you enjoy the workshop?
• Was Minecraft useful to visualize different ideas?
• Were you able to express your design ideas?
• Was Minecraft easy to use?
• Would you join future workshops with Minecraft?
5.1. Results of the Workshop
In describing the most and least successful aspects of
the workshops there was a wide range of responses.
In describing the most successful aspects, the most com‐
mon responses were on the themes of:
• Easy to visualise different design ideas and an
immersive view of the environment;
• Introducing urban design to a new audience;
• Creating a comfortable environment and collabo‐
rating with others.
Regarding the least successful element of the workshop,
half of the participants commented on the difficulty of
adding realistic details due to Minecraft’s “blockiness.”
A number of participants also expressed that they would
have preferred to have more advanced building tools
made available to them in order to speed up their design
process. Twenty‐nine out of 40 participants suggested
Minecraft could be a valid alternative to more tradi‐
tional consultation methods, with the remainder argu‐
ing that it should be used in addition to (not in place
of). Both the initial and final questionnaires suggest a
highly positive response to most aspects of the workshop
and are a strong endorsement of Minecraft’s value as
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
New to Minecra?
Familiar with Main Quad?
Any architectural training?
No Yes
Figure 4. Initial questionnaire.
Urban Planning, 2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342 336
Figure 5. Sample of Minecraft plots: Plan view.
an accessible, fun, and effective visualisation and design
tool. The background of participants must be taken into
account, however, with the vast majority having had pre‐
vious experience using Minecraft.
In both the questionnaires and plot builds them‐
selves, there was evidence that participants had con‐
ducted at least some additional research on the Main
Quad. There was no suggestion to do this, and it was
encouraging to see participants explore the wider con‐
text of the brief unprompted. In some cases, participants
went beyond the brief by building some of the Main
Quad’s surrounding context.
Urban Planning, 2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342 337
Some participants took this a step further and used
features such as the game’s weather patterns to invoke
a digital environment that represented Central London.
As a light‐hearted comment on the UK’s notoriously
rainy weather, one participant permanently changed the
weather cycle to “rain” on their plot, meaning that both
themselves and any visitors could only experience their
design amidst a digital downpour in Minecraft (Figure 6).
Whilst some participants displayed a clear interest
in the history, heritage, and context of the chosen site,
there were some who chose to recontextualize and relo‐
cate the UCL Main Quad by building a fictional setting
surrounding it. One participant filled the entire available
plot by adding a newly imagined road to replace Gower
Street and designing new buildings opposite the Quad’s
entrance. Furthermore, they made significant changes
to the historic structure of the Quad itself. Whilst the
server rules prevented participants from editing existing
blocks, this participant was able to re‐design the building
by adding a façade around the existing build. This kind
of inventive defying of the rules represented some level
of frustration amongst a small number of participants
regarding what they could or could not do. This is per‐
haps unsurprising for more experienced players, as for
many Minecraft is a game defined by its lack of rules and
total, unrestricted creative freedom.
A measure of success can be found in the age
range of the participants, with an average age of 18.
The youngest participant was 12, and there were 16 par‐
ticipants under the age of 16. This demonstrates a high
level of engagement with a young audience, largely
thanks to Minecraft’s popularity with this age demo‐
graphic. In answering the final questionnaire, 85% of par‐
ticipants said they would join a future urban design work‐
shop if Minecraft was used, with the remaining 15% say‐
ing maybe. This makes a strong case that the tool is highly
effective at engaging young people, who are notoriously
difficult to attract, in participatory design processes.
A challenge of attracting such a young audience can
be the difficulty of maintaining the maturity required to
engage in a process such as this. Although a design brief
had been set, I was fully expecting many participants to
ignore this entirely and enjoy creating their own designs
irrelevant to the site and brief. Although some designs
were far more playful than practical, all the participants
bar one engaged with the brief in some way by adding
spaces for outdoor learning or teacher. The participant
who did not (also a UCL student), built a giant trampoline
and airborne assault course inside the Quad (Figure 7).
Whilst this may seem incongruous to its surroundings
and unhelpful to the brief, this playful approach should
not be instantly dismissed. Minecraft provides a “safe
space” for participants to experiment and test ideas with‐
out fear of criticism or failure.
When asked what the least successful element of the
workshop was, by far the most frequent answer was that
Minecraft was too blocky to add detail or create realistic
designs. As the Quad was built at a 1:1 scale, the small‐
est module/block that participants could place would be
1 m3in reality. As the user SH0RKS put it: “It’s pretty chal‐
lenging to express intent for small details in Minecraft at
least for me. That makes it hard to really flesh out an idea
and consider how it could be made in reality.”
Yet, when considering that on average participants
spent three hours and 17 minutes on their designs,
I would argue that this was one of Minecraft’s great‐
est strengths as a design tool. The lack of possible
detail meant that participants were not bogged down
Figure 6. Minecraft plot by PixelatedSun: UCL Quad in the rain.
Urban Planning, 2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342 338
Figure 7. Minecraft plot by kennc05: Trampoline and assault course.
in creating accurate and realistic representations of
their concept. Instead, Minecraft was used as a three‐
dimensional sketching tool and proved useful for quickly
depicting an idea or concept in the virtual space. In some
cases, participants would supplement their designs with
a written explanation (using a Minecraft sign) to remove
any doubt (Figure 8).
Although the plot layout of the Minecraft world
allowed each participant to work on their individual
design, participants were able to work as groups if they
wished. A plot owner could “approve” other users, thus
giving them access to their own plot. In several cases, par‐
ticipants chose to work together to produce one design.
Most teams consisted of two participants, the largest
consisting of four. Given the remote nature of the work‐
shop, it was surprising to see participants who had never
met before deciding to collaborate in this manner.
Many participants commented on the positive social
aspects of the tool; for instance, being able to visit
other participants’ plots, talking, and, in some cases,
Figure 8. Minecraft plot by BWEvents1: “Water fountain… I guess.”
Urban Planning, 2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342 339
co‐creating with them. Eighty‐five per cent of partici‐
pants talked with each other and the 3,800 messages
sent suggest a high degree of social activity. In answer‐
ing whether they enjoyed using Minecraft, 18% of partic‐
ipants specifically mentioned that interacting with other
players was an enjoyable feature, with some request‐
ing that they would have preferred a system that made
visiting other plots easier. As inhabited virtual spaces,
Minecraft servers are highly sociable in their nature, and
this was clearly a great benefit to the workshop. In hind‐
sight, this could have been improved by running the
workshop for a shorter term, or perhaps only specific
hours on each day. This would have led to a higher con‐
centration of concurrent users, fostering a livelier and
more collaborative environment. One participant sug‐
gested the following: “I would suggest implementing a
hub in‐game for people to meet and chat in order to
exchange ideas and discuss issues and constraints.”
Whilst the discussions in the workshop were largely
spontaneous between participants, it would have cer‐
tainly helped to have a dedicated space for discussion
and meet in‐game. Allocating a specific time for users to
present their ideas to each other could have also helped
with the cross‐pollination of design ideas.
Yet another element of the workshop results worth
discussing was the creative use of narrative and story‐
telling within participants’ plots. Participants were able
to use Minecraft not simply as a design tool, but as an
immersive, interactive environment through which other
ideas could be expressed beyond a design schematic.
Participants’ abilities to place characters and animals,
readable books, and change environmental factors such
as time of day and weather opened up a much wider
range of creative possibilities than most other 3D tools
afford. Furthermore, it helped to create environments
that were enjoyable to explore and interact with.
6. Conclusions
This study confirms that Minecraft has a great deal to
offer as a public participation tool in urban design and
planning. The outputs of the UCLCraft workshop demon‐
strate that the use of Minecraft can help engage a wide
audience (youth in particular) with consultation pro‐
cesses. Furthermore, the tool itself provides a useful visu‐
alization of existing sites and is an accessible platform
for participants to present their own opinions as 3D vir‐
tual designs.
Minecraft improves upon the existing uses of 3D
multi‐user environments in several ways. Firstly, it is a
well‐established and highly popular platform, especially
with a younger age demographic. The act of including
Minecraft in a design consultation helps enormously in
attracting the “non‐joiners” (Ministry of Housing and
Local Government, 1969) to the process. The importance
of a user‐friendly interface cannot be underestimated in
the use of technology in democratic processes, and, in
this regard, Minecraft is well‐suited to the task. The total
amount of time spent by users in my workshop (14 days
and nine hours), confirms that Minecraft is not only effec‐
tive at attracting participants, but also maintaining their
attention and interest.
Secondly, when used in the right way, Minecraft
offers a unique opportunity for a truly collaborative and
inclusive co‐design process, especially when there are
multiple users in the same virtual space at the same time.
The results of my workshop confirm that a num‐
ber of Minecraft’s features and core characteristics
enhance its value as a participatory design tool. Some
of these features were highlighted by the partici‐
pants in their questionnaire responses, the benefit
of Minecraft’s first‐person point of view for instance.
The low‐resolution, “blocky” nature of the game was
also valued by participants as it allowed them to
quickly sketch ideas without “wasting time in details” (as
described by user italosena).
Other useful features of the game became apparent
through my observations of participant activity through‐
out the workshop. The ability to add narrative and story‐
telling elements to their designs helped many partici‐
pants create more immersive experiences within their
Minecraft models. The benefits of Minecraft’s playful
nature can also be seen in the creativity of participants’
proposals. In a number of more fantastical proposals,
participants were not limited by regulations or practi‐
cal considerations, even finding ways to circumvent the
boundaries that had been put in place.
Urban and societal change is typically a slow process.
In this respect, Minecraft can be used as a catalyst to
improve the efficiency and quality of decision‐making in
planning and urban design. There is still a long way to
go before Minecraft would be considered a mainstream
participatory process; advocates of it, such as the Block
by Block Foundation, need to engage more with universi‐
ties, NGOs, and policy‐makers to raise awareness of the
tool and its benefits.
Despite its benefits, Minecraft is not a panacea for
the inherent difficulties of community consultation. In
its implementation, it must be used in combination with
other tools and methods, some of which can be inte‐
grated into the game, and some of which are best carried
out in the physical rather than virtual realms.
One major shortcoming of this research was
the lack of variety in my own workshop’s partici‐
pants. Participants were overwhelmingly experienced
Minecraft players who were unfamiliar with the site in
question. This is in direct contrast to the participants of
the Block by Block workshop, who were completely new
to Minecraft and local to the site. This makes it difficult to
draw comparisons between the two, as the positionality
of both groups of participants was so different. To rem‐
edy this, I should have ensured participation from groups
outside the Minecraft gaming community—for instance,
targeting student groups.
Furthermore, the term of the workshop was too long.
With participants spending an average of just over three
Urban Planning, 2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342 340
hours on their designs, the availability of the server for
120 hours was not needed and only served to lower
the average population of the server at any one time,
reducing the opportunity for collaboration and interac‐
tion between participants. The workshop could also have
contained more information about the site and the con‐
text of the brief. Although many participants successfully
researched the site online, by integrating images, video,
and text into the “spawn” area of the Minecraft world,
I could have helped participants better understand the
environment they were being asked to re‐design.
Finally, my workshop has shown that Minecraft is
suitable for hosting an entirely remote participatory
process, an advantage that has particular relevance in
the current Covid‐19 climate. This is not to say that a
remote Minecraft workshop is an improvement on a
physical one; had circumstances allowed, I would have
still preferred to carry out my research at a face‐to‐face
Minecraft workshop. Nonetheless, it is a useful tool when
this is not an option. Furthermore, it presents a unique
opportunity to engage with citizens from anywhere in the
world. Inevitably, this means that not all participants will
have local knowledge of the site being discussed; how‐
ever, it does allow for a much greater number of partici‐
pants who are able to bring in a wide variety of cultural
and societal influences into the discourse.
Acknowledgments
This work is the result of my master’s research project at
University College London’s Development Planning Unit.
I thank my supervisor Professor Andrew Hudson‐Smith
for his support, as well as colleagues at the Block by Block
Foundation and UN‐Habitat for their continued work in
this field.
Conflict of Interests
This article discusses the work of the non‐profit Block by
Block Foundation, which I am a serving board member of.
As a voluntary position, this does not present a conflict
of interests; rather, I have been able to use my knowl‐
edge and experience from within Block by Block to fur‐
ther my research.
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About the Author
James Delaney is the chairman of the Block by Block Foundation, a non‐profit partnership between
UN‐Habitat, Mojang, and Microsoft which uses Minecraft as a community participation tool in urban
design. James is also the founder and managing director of BlockWorks, an international design stu‐
dio which has pioneered the use of Minecraft as a design tool for creating immersive digital experi‐
ences. James studied architecture before completing his MRes in interdisciplinary urban design at the
Bartlett’s Development Planning Unit.
Urban Planning, 2022, Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 330–342 342
