More than 3,700 players have teamed up to rebuild New York City inside Minecraft, block by block, at full real-world scale. The massive project is part of Build The Earth, a global initiative launched by YouTuber PippenFTS to recreate Earth inside the game.
Around 45 regional teams are helping build the digital Earth, but the New York City group is by far the biggest and busiest. The team includes everyone from experienced builders with real-world architectural skills to first-timers putting together their first virtual stretch of sidewalk.
Working under the MineFact banner, the team has focused its early efforts on Lower Manhattan, one of the city’s most complex areas to recreate. Known for its dense layout, historic buildings, and irregular street patterns, the neighborhood has already taken shape in pixelated form, including Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty, along with familiar areas such as SoHo, NoHo, Nolita, Little Italy, Chinatown, and Two Bridges.
Accuracy is central to the project. Builders work from real-world reference data such as satellite imagery and street-level photographs, often rebuilding sections multiple times to refine details and match real-world proportions.
Builders divide the city into coordinate grids, align work across time zones, and use specialized plugins to match real-world topography. A shared server supports collaboration by maintaining continuous backups of builds, terrain data, and user logs.
Even with all the work done in Lower Manhattan, the team says this is still just the beginning. Parts of Midtown and Queens are now under construction, and the first signs of Brooklyn are starting to show up. Meanwhile, the Bronx and Staten Island are still empty on the map, a sign that this project may take a long time to complete.
Build The Earth makes a point of being welcoming to newcomers, no matter their experience level. Architectural or design skills can help, but they’re not mandatory. New builders get access to tutorials, coordinate maps, and shared templates so everything stays consistent across the project.
The project remains open to new participants. Those interested can connect through the Build The Earth NYC Discord server or visit the official website (https://buildtheearth.net/teams/nyc), becoming part of a large-scale virtual collaboration that continues to grow.
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