Public Space with Block by Block and UN Habitat

The Public Space project is a partnership with UN Habitat, in partnership with the Block by Block Institute of Mojang, creator of the MineCraft video game, to improve public spaces with involvement of local communities in developing countries.

The idea of the BbB project is to implement a participatory methodology for remodeling urban spaces by the communities themselves, using the Mine Craft tool for this design.

For the first time, the BbB foundation decided to work with organizations representing street and market vendors, and so a partnership was established with StreetNet International and its affiliate in Nigeria, FIWON, to carry out a pilot.

FIWON members from the Ketu Ijanikin community market in Lagos took part in the various stages of the project, including a workshop in which they learned how to use MIneCraft, visited the space where they would like to build a market and modeled the market as they would like to build it.

With this, work was done with architects, universities, the municipality and possible developers of the construction until a final design was defined at a validation workshop and a developer company agreed to build the market project, committed to develop a project accessible and affordable for the community’s vendors.

It is a participatory project in which the community itself carried out the urban design, the negotiation with the local government and the construction company in order to have an inclusive, organized, accessible and healthy public space, taking into account the needs of the market vendors community.