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New York City is being recreated at 1:1 scale inside Minecraft — project is 5 years in and contains over 50,000 buildings so far
YouTuber and Build The Earth project lead MineFact just shared one of the biggest, most detailed city recreations on Minecraft. The creator shared a video of the progress of their team’s build, which so far has covered most of Lower Manhattan. This 1:1 scale build, which started with a team of at least 50 to 80 Minecraft players working together simultaneously, covers nearly 700 square km or about 270 square miles, with some areas being rebuilt multiple times to ensure real-world accuracy.
The team has since completed multiple areas, including Liberty Island, which contains the Statue of Liberty, NoHo, SoHo, Nolita, Bowery, Little Italy, Chinatown, Two Bridges, and every other district neighborhood south of Canal St., except for the Financial District.
We spent 5 YEARS building NEW YORK CITY in Minecraft - YouTube
The Build The Earth project is an effort started by PippenFTS, another YouTube creator whose dream is to recreate our entire planet on a 1:1 scale on Minecraft. This resulted in a massive effort — 45 teams ranging from a handful of people to thousands of members all pitching in to help bring the project to life one block at a time. BTE New York City is by far the largest group, with over 3,719 members at the time of writing.
This project isn’t just a one-time build either. Instead, they’ve rebuilt several sections to ensure the accuracy of their Minecraft version of NYC. “Over the years, we realized how much details matter,” MineFact said in the video. “Like when a random guy from New York City logs in and finds his flowerpot on his balcony exactly where it is in real life, that’s when you know it’s perfect. Their reactions are always priceless.”
Despite their great progress, the team is just scratching the surface of this potentially multi-decade project. Most of the completed neighborhoods are in Lower Manhattan, although we see good progress in the rest of Manhattan, too. There’s also some good development in Queens and one part of Brooklyn, but The Bronx and Staten Island remain untouched at the moment.
Because of this, the team is continuously looking for volunteers who want to join the effort. You don’t have to be well-versed in creating buildings in Minecraft, as the team offers guidance and basic builds to help you get started. If you’re interested, you can always hop on the BTE NYC Discord server to get started or visit the Build The Earth NYC website to learn more.
Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.
