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Minecraft For Real Life: This Video Game Wants To Help Redesign Actual Cities #makereducation
Fastcoexist published a piece on a new game called Block, which is inspired by Minecraft but with the goal of crowdsourcing city planning solutions.
More than 100 million people play Minecraft, building virtual worlds out of virtual blocks. What if some of them started to use the same skills to redesign actual cities?
A new video game in development at the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture is designed to make anyone a city planner. Using real city data, the game will start with Los Angeles but has the potential to be tailored to any city in the world.
“Gamescapes research seeks to democratize the design of the built environment through the use of video games,” says Jose Sanchez, assistant professor in architecture at USC, who is working on the project with Satoru Sugihara and Sergio Irigoyen.
In the game, called Block, players build neighborhoods from components like housing, businesses, and parks, continually rearranging the pieces to find the optimum arrangement that citizens would most want to use and that would have the least cost for the city.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython 2025 Wraps, Focus on Using Python, Open Source and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!