The “Science Year”, organized yearly by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, will put its focus on cities this year. According to the motto “Science Year 2015 – City of the Future”, Germans are asked to submit ideas and suggestions on how they picture future cities. The goal of the Science Year is to discuss and find solutions for upcoming challenges such as eco-friendly energy supply in urban areas or the consequences resulting from demographic change.
Minecraft future city
It was within this framework that the competition “Minecraft – City of the Future” came into being. Anyone who is interested can participate in the competition, create his or her idea of a future city with Minecraft or the free variant Minetest and submit it until October 31. Aspects such as traffic, architecture, time and society as well as energy supply, nature and health should be included in the ideas. Winners will be announced on December 7 the latest.
Success story Minecraft
The construction game Minecraft was published in 2009 and created by the Swedish programmer Markus Persson. Since 2014, Minecraft is part of Microsoft. Its major task is to build various constructions with square cubes. The open world game has two different gaming modes: the fight for survival mode, where the gamer has to explore various worlds, and the creative mode, where the gamer mainly focuses on designing and building architectures. The 3D-game sets no limits to creativity and has now well over 100 million registered users.
15th Science Year
The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research has been hosting the Science Year since 2000. Its goal is to investigate specific topics in a comprehensive way and to enable a dialogue between citizens and scientists. In addition, its objective is to boost transparency in scientific research – providing everybody with the opportunity to come to know what is being researched and why. With more than 800 research facilities and universities, Germany is a renowned research hotspot.
Find more information about the Science Year and the Minecraft competition on the Science Year’s website.