Riga jumps on Minecraft to engage high school students in urban planning

In the Latvian capital of Riga, educators have found a way to get children actively involved in thinking about how their city might evolve and take shape in the future. They turned to a virtual world familiar to most kids: Minecraft. A digital twin of Riga was designed that every pupil can access through the game's education edition.

In an extra-curricular pilot with external partners, twenty existing buildings in the city's historical center were selected for participants to redevelop. Teams of students visited the sites, which included Riga's opera house and a Radisson Blu hotel. The teams then got to work in Minecraft, where they had twelve days to redesign and reconstruct their building's environment.

Riga's city council is now looking into other ways to implement Minecraft into its curriculum, including in subjects like chemistry and biology.