[0:00] We spent five years building New York
[0:02] City in Minecraft, guys. As a new
[0:05] Minecraft player, this is like like five
[0:08] years.
[0:10] What? For the past 1,000 days, my team
[0:13] and I have been recreating New York City
[0:15] into Minecraft at a 1:1 scale. Now,
[0:17] after 5 years, we built more than 50,000
[0:20] buildings and already [music] fully
[0:21] finished the huge amount of districts in
[0:23] Manhattan. Every single building is
[0:25] being recreated from real life with
[0:26] insane amount of precision, details, and
[0:28] secrets for you to explore with your
[0:30] friends. All in a massive world spanning
[0:32] across 700 km. Today, we are exploring
[0:35] what's been built by the team over the
[0:37] past 5 years. Many sleepless nights and
[0:40] hundreds of hours went into this video
[0:42] alone. Get ready for the most extreme
[0:44] progress update on this channel so far.
[0:47] So, lean back. Okay, so is this like
[0:49] Google Earth and they're like zooming in
[0:51] on each building? Um, like quickly, just
[0:54] cuz I don't know this, I've only played
[0:55] hardcore Minecraft so far. They didn't
[0:58] farm all these mats, right? They're
[0:59] playing in some mode where they have
[1:00] infinite blocks. I hope probably, right?
[1:06] And creative mode. Okay. So, they can
[1:09] build whatever they want. They have
[1:10] infinite blocks. And then they're like
[1:12] onetoone mapping it through Google Maps
[1:15] or Earth or whatever.
[1:16] >> Take a coffee and enjoy a tour through
[1:18] the history of building New York City in
[1:20] Minecraft. [music]
[1:23] Okay,
[1:26] dude. The amount I mean just the time 5
[1:29] years.
[1:32] Okay, so how do you get started? 5
[1:36] years. That's quite a lot of time.
[1:38] >> Yeah,
[1:38] >> basically it all started in 2020 when
[1:41] the entire world shut down.
[1:44] >> Oh,
[1:46] co
[1:48] suddenly
[1:48] >> CO hits. They have in like it's like all
[1:50] right, we're trapped inside. Let's
[1:51] rebuild New York City within Minecraft
[1:53] then. I mean, that makes sense. That
[1:54] makes sense.
[1:55] >> From one day to another, all of us were
[1:57] stuck at home with nothing to do. As bad
[2:00] as this pandemic was, Build the Earth
[2:02] probably wouldn't exist without it.
[2:04] That's when a YouTuber named Pitman FTS
[2:06] dropped a video that changed everything.
[2:08] >> One day, a one:1 scale model of the
[2:10] Earth with all our humanmade structures
[2:13] will be completed. But I don't want to
[2:16] stand alone in this project. That's why
[2:18] I'm calling for all mcrafter around the
[2:21] world, skilled builders and
[2:23] organizations to join in on this effort.
[2:26] Start their own planet Earth map, pick a
[2:28] large city or territory of their own,
[2:30] and work on creating it onetoone scale
[2:34] just as it stands today. Bro, wait.
[2:36] They're going to So, they did New York,
[2:38] but they're going to do the whole world
[2:40] and then put it all together. Bro, that
[2:42] would be Bro, imagine you download an
[2:45] Earth Minecraft map and you have the
[2:47] entire Earth to ex No. No way. And yeah,
[2:51] so we did. Our team chose New York City.
[2:55] Afterwards, we prepared everything
[2:56] needed to start something as insane as
[2:58] this. How we pulled it off and all the
[3:01] technical challenges along the way would
[3:03] take a full video on its own. For now,
[3:05] let's just say somehow we managed to get
[3:08] started. [music] The first area that
[3:10] everyone wanted to work on was the World
[3:12] Trade Center District for obvious
[3:14] reasons. We all were hyped, but there
[3:16] was one issue. None of us had much
[3:18] building experience, especially not for
[3:20] this kind of building. Recreating an
[3:22] entire city at a one:1 scale was never
[3:25] really attempted before, and [music]
[3:27] there were no tutorials or guidelines
[3:29] online that you could just watch and
[3:30] learn from. So, we just started and had
[3:33] huge building sessions every day with 50
[3:36] to 80 builders working on
[3:37] >> I was literally just going to ask how
[3:40] many of them was it? And then he read my
[3:41] mind and answered it in real time on a
[3:44] YouTube video that was recorded years
[3:45] ago.
[3:47] >> One area at the same time.
[3:48] >> It was complete chaos, but also super
[3:51] fun to make that much progress in just a
[3:53] few hours. The learning curve was brutal
[3:56] and we made so many mistakes. [music]
[3:58] Honestly, most of that early work
[4:00] doesn't even exist anymore. We've
[4:02] already rebuilt most of it multiple
[4:04] times. For example, here's what it looks
[4:06] like in 2020. And here's the version
[4:09] from 2024. See [music] the difference?
[4:11] Over the years, we realized how much
[4:13] details matter. Like when a random guy
[4:16] from New York City logs in and finds his
[4:19] flower pot on his balcony exactly where
[4:21] it is in real life, that's when you know
[4:23] it's worth it. Their reactions are
[4:25] always priceless.
[4:26] >> Yeah.
[4:27] >> Okay. So, here's an overview of
[4:29] Manhattan Island with all of its
[4:30] districts. Each one of them has its own
[4:33] story. And in this video, I want to show
[4:35] you how all these districts came
[4:36] together over the years. As mentioned
[4:38] before, we started with the World Trade
[4:40] Center District, but it's tiny compared
[4:42] to Tribeca, which is right next to it.
[4:44] It literally took years to finish
[4:46] Tribeca completely. So, let me show you
[4:48] a time-lapse of its creation process to
[4:50] give you an idea of how much work went
[4:52] into this.
[4:53] >> Times 5,000 speed. by the way,
[4:55] >> one district. [music] Same as the
[4:57] Memorial area. This wasn't built in one
[4:59] go. For nearly 2 years, it was 99%
[5:02] complete simply because we kept finding
[5:04] new things to improve and more details
[5:06] to fix. Many parts of the district were
[5:08] rebuilt over and over again just because
[5:11] they became outdated over time and
[5:13] didn't meet our standards. Now,
[5:15] >> another huge challenge we faced,
[5:17] especially during the creation of
[5:18] Tribeca, was our ongoing elevation
[5:21] problem. See, after Pippen's first build
[5:23] the earth video went viral with over 60
[5:25] million views, all this code was just
[5:27] flooded with thousands of people who all
[5:29] wanted to help build New York City. This
[5:31] meant we had to start fast. And once we
[5:34] helped to solve the projection problem,
[5:35] we began building within a week. But
[5:38] >> projection build the earth.
[5:41] >> Since we had to set up everything so
[5:43] fast, our first version of the New York
[5:45] City map didn't include any elevation
[5:47] data at all. Everything was just flat.
[5:50] In my first video from 2020, you can see
[5:52] that these headlight image was just
[5:54] printed in a flat world with staked
[5:56] building shells on top. At first, this
[5:58] wasn't a huge problem at all since
[6:00] Manhattan is mostly flat anyway. But we
[6:03] knew that eventually we'd need to
[6:05] migrate all our buildings to a new map,
[6:07] and the more we built, the harder this
[6:09] house would obviously become. And
[6:11] getting high quality elevation data was
[6:13] another headache.
[6:14] >> That's annoying.
[6:14] >> Because Manhattan is so densely packed
[6:16] with buildings, it's nearly impossible
[6:18] to capture. I mean, this would be a lot
[6:19] easier if the earth was flat. Like,
[6:23] unless it is like, you know what I'm
[6:24] like, if if the earth was flat, this it
[6:26] would be easier to build Minecraft that
[6:28] way. [sighs]
[6:31] Accurate ground elevation data for the
[6:34] entire island. In the end, the best
[6:36] approach was to manually apply elevation
[6:38] in lower Manhattan using World Edit
[6:40] while using high precision lighter data
[6:42] for the rest. [music] Special thanks to
[6:44] Leax for spending hundreds of hours to
[6:47] manually adjust the elevation on
[6:48] Manhattan Island. This was a crazy task
[6:51] and in my eyes, he did a perfect job.
[6:53] [music] Finally, in June 2022, we
[6:55] released version two of New York City.
[6:57] Now, imagine one day they finished this
[7:00] and these guys this guy has like a like
[7:02] a a great grandchild and he's asking him
[7:05] like, "What did you do in your lifetime,
[7:07] great granddad?" And then he's like, I
[7:09] rebuilt Earth
[7:12] in Minecraft.
[7:15] Like just just imagine that for a sec.
[7:17] >> Featuring proper elevation across the
[7:19] entire map.
[7:20] >> But enough about elevation. Let's get
[7:22] back to Tribeca. As you can see in the
[7:24] time lapse, this district is massive. It
[7:27] spans 81 city blocks and contains over
[7:29] 850 [music] buildings. We tried to build
[7:31] all of them as detailed as possible. And
[7:34] eventually after countless revisions,
[7:36] Tribeca came together beautifully. It's
[7:38] now one of the most complex and detailed
[7:40] zones in the entire map and one we
[7:42] incredibly proud of. But Tribeca isn't
[7:44] the only district, of course. Just in
[7:46] lower Manhattan, we already fully
[7:48] completed 14 more districts. [music]
[7:50] Unfortunately, I can't show you every
[7:52] district today in that much detail.
[7:54] Otherwise, this video would probably be
[7:55] hours long.
[7:56] >> Maybe in future videos, we'll take a
[7:58] deeper dive into the history behind some
[8:00] of them.
[8:00] >> [music]
[8:00] >> For now, let's just take a quick look at
[8:02] each district one by one so you can see
[8:05] how the city evolved over the years.
[8:07] After finishing Tribeca, we moved on to
[8:09] the Two Bridges District, home to the
[8:11] Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge. We put so
[8:13] much effort into the bridges because
[8:15] they are so famous and iconic. First, we
[8:17] studied its architectural drawings to
[8:19] get everything right, obsessing over
[8:21] every detail, from textures to the angle
[8:24] of every single beam. We just wanted to
[8:26] make it perfect. If you ever spot a
[8:28] mistake, please don't tell the builders,
[8:30] otherwise they'll instantly want to
[8:31] rebuild the whole thing. The rest of the
[8:34] district was finished in 2021, [music]
[8:36] and it's been evolving ever since. A
[8:38] year into the project, we are making
[8:40] tons of progress all over the city, but
[8:42] the grant never stopped. For months, we
[8:44] made one big session after another,
[8:46] building landmarks all over the city,
[8:48] like Times Square with its massive
[8:50] amount of billboards, or the Flat Iron
[8:52] District in Midtown Manhattan with its
[8:54] beautiful Medicine Square Park. At the
[8:56] same time, we also continued to build in
[8:58] lower Manhattan. The first area we
[9:00] concentrated on was Little Italy, a
[9:02] compact neighborhood defined by narrow
[9:04] streets, cozy restaurants, and a
[9:06] character that immediately stood out to
[9:08] me. It's a small district, but it feels
[9:11] completely different from the rest of
[9:12] lower Manhattan. Almost like stepping
[9:14] into another city within the city. Right
[9:17] next door is Chinatown, over three times
[9:19] the size, but completed in the same
[9:21] amount of time thanks to more routined
[9:22] and efficient teamwork.
[9:24] >> That's crazy. This early district still
[9:26] holds some personal touches from the
[9:27] builders, like a Chinese New Year parade
[9:29] that was placed right in the middle of
[9:31] Chinatown. To bring all the areas
[9:33] together, we hosted a 48 hour build
[9:36] event to complete the civic center this
[9:37] morning and combine all districts into
[9:40] one massive completed area. It was a
[9:43] huge success and I still remember I was
[9:46] quite exhausted after this because I
[9:48] live streamed a big portion of it. But
[9:50] we made so much progress in this event
[9:52] alone, it was crazy.
[9:54] after grinding through man.
[9:56] >> I don't know about you guys, but what I
[9:57] want to see is the building process.
[9:59] Like what are they looking at to then
[10:02] replicate and like how does it look to
[10:03] actually like how quick can you actually
[10:05] just like see something and then rebuild
[10:07] it? I like I want to see how that works,
[10:09] right?
[10:10] >> Skyscrapers for months. We needed a
[10:12] break and we wanted to try out something
[10:14] different because actually most of New
[10:16] York City isn't just skyscrapers. It's
[10:18] neighborhoods and a huge part of the
[10:20] city's soul lives in Brooklyn and
[10:22] Queens. While we were busy polishing
[10:25] lower Manhattan, tens of thousands of
[10:27] buildings were popping up in the outer
[10:28] burrows, made possible by our building
[10:30] system that lets the entire community
[10:32] work on the city in parallel. The core
[10:35] idea has always been that anyone can
[10:37] join a project and start building
[10:39] immediately. What stops griefers from
[10:41] just griefing?
[10:43] >> Like, you know what I mean? If it's open
[10:45] to the community and anyone can start
[10:47] helping, what if someone just went in
[10:48] and just started burning everything to
[10:50] the ground? Are you kidding me?
[10:52] admins. But like what if someone just
[10:55] deletes like half of it before the admin
[10:57] got to them? Maybe there's something
[10:58] where like you can only delete one block
[11:00] every
[11:02] 10 seconds or I don't I don't know. And
[11:05] there's like backups, too. Oh, you can
[11:08] make certain things unbreakable. So once
[11:09] a part's finished, you just like safe
[11:11] zone it. Uh so there's Okay, there's
[11:14] probably ways, bro. I'm just thinking
[11:16] like dude, what if someone gets in there
[11:17] and they they burn the thing to the
[11:19] ground? much prior knowledge. Just
[11:21] launch Minecraft, go to
[11:22] nyc.buildoff.net,
[11:25] join the building server, and boom,
[11:26] you're put in front of a real New York
[11:28] building that you can now work on. New
[11:30] players usually start with residential
[11:32] homes in Brooklyn.
[11:34] >> Oh, this is how so they just build it
[11:36] and then they copy paste it to the
[11:38] actual world. But if you're building it,
[11:40] you're like isolated.
[11:43] They thought this through Queens.
[11:46] simple, iconic, and great for learning,
[11:48] especially if you don't have much
[11:49] building experience or never recreated a
[11:51] structure at a 1:1 scale in Minecraft
[11:53] before. As you level up, you unlock more
[11:55] complex structures like multi-story
[11:57] apartments, town houses, and eventually
[12:00] even skyscrapers. Once all buildings in
[12:02] the neighborhood are done, our advanced
[12:04] team steps in to finish the area, adding
[12:07] roads trees sidewalks lights and
[12:10] more. Only when everything is fully
[12:12] completed and perfectly detailed
[12:14] district is marked complete on our
[12:16] >> someone in the chat says go on their
[12:17] Zar. Bro, have you seen me try to build
[12:19] a house? I put like four doors in and
[12:21] they're like hitting each other and like
[12:22] it's like the wrong dimensions. It's
[12:24] it's bad, man. I need some more
[12:26] experience. Okay, progress website. On
[12:29] Manhattan's west side is Battery Park
[12:31] City, a modern mix of luxury to peaceful
[12:34] green spaces. Our builders took their
[12:36] time capturing its clean, modern wipe.
[12:38] We hosted another 48 hour build event to
[12:41] complete Battery Park, the one at the
[12:43] south of Manhattan Island. From there,
[12:45] you can see the Statue of Liberty, which
[12:47] we built during a Mr. Beast challenge,
[12:49] competing for an $8,000 trip to New York
[12:51] City. By the way, congrats to John Andre
[12:54] for winning the trip. You really
[12:56] deserved it, man. Battery Park is the
[12:58] largest park we finished so far, soon to
[13:00] be dominated by Central Park, which uh
[13:02] we haven't started yet.
[13:04] >> Oh my goodness. This financial district
[13:06] is the last one in this area that is
[13:07] still under construction. Most
[13:09] skyscrapers of lower Manhattan are
[13:11] located here. So, we are taking extra
[13:13] care to get every one of them just
[13:15] right. But nearby, the tiny seapot
[13:18] district was finished back in 2022. With
[13:20] that, we've now completed almost all of
[13:22] South Manhattan. Just north is the Soho
[13:25] district, finished in 2021. Known for
[13:28] its artistic wipe and cast iron
[13:30] buildings, Soho really changed how we
[13:32] worked. Instead of group builds, each
[13:35] builder now took full responsibility for
[13:36] an entire block, which somehow brought
[13:39] some sort of consistency and style
[13:41] across the entire district. The result
[13:43] is a detailed, stylish district, and
[13:45] it's just cool to rock through it and do
[13:47] some exploration.
[13:49] With Soho done, we moved on to its
[13:51] neighbors, Bowery, Nolita, and Nohoo.
[13:54] These areas might not have skyscrapers,
[13:56] but they are full of personality. old
[13:59] tenementss, boutique shops, narrow
[14:00] streets, and yeah, we recreated each
[14:03] district carefully to preserve its
[14:05] unique blend of history and culture.
[14:08] >> Together, they stitched the final pieces
[14:10] of Lower Manhattan into one seamless,
[14:12] fully connected, finished world. After
[14:15] all these years, this world has turned
[14:16] into one of the largest 1:1 recreations
[14:19] ever created in Minecraft, and you can
[14:21] literally explore it for hours and
[14:23] hours. We also wanted to make this
[14:25] >> when he says one one to one and someone
[14:27] in the chat asked this question too a
[14:29] second ago is like how many feet one
[14:32] block is or yards or whatever like is it
[14:37] based off the height of the Minecraft
[14:38] character and they like translated it
[14:40] perfectly so it's actually a true one to
[14:41] one in terms of like the height of a
[14:43] person. I mean there's some people that
[14:45] are taller than others like I I'm I'm
[14:48] tall for a Mexican. I'm like 58 almost
[14:51] 5'9. the average height's more like like
[14:53] in the 5'7 for a Mexican-American male.
[14:56] Um, but that's not the point. The point
[14:58] is I wonder what the scaling is.
[15:00] >> World available to you guys. You can
[15:02] download and explore it together with
[15:04] your friends or do other creator stuff
[15:06] with it. That's why we just released a
[15:08] new map on our ability of Patreon called
[15:10] BTE New York City version 3, which is
[15:13] available both for Java and Bedrock
[15:15] Edition on the latest Minecraft version
[15:16] for you to download. The map lets you
[15:19] teleport to all the lower Manhattan
[15:20] districts that were covered in this
[15:22] video and contains many Easter eggs
[15:24] which are waiting for you to find.
[15:26] >> We tried our best to optimize the world
[15:28] to perform as smooth as possible even on
[15:30] low-end PCs and other devices like
[15:32] smartphones or conscious.
[15:35] >> If you are impressed by all the work
[15:36] we've put into the map for the past 5
[15:38] years and want to support the project
[15:40] moving forward, make sure to check out
[15:42] the download link in the description and
[15:44] visit our Patreon. Of course, there's so
[15:47] much more ongoing progress across the
[15:49] city, but that's a story for another
[15:51] video. Hopefully, this gave you a solid
[15:53] look at how Low Manhattan came together
[15:55] over the years and just how much effort
[15:57] it's taken to get this far.
[15:59] >> Oh, yeah.
[15:59] >> In future videos, we'll dive into other
[16:02] parts of the city and show you what the
[16:04] builders are working on right now. We've
[16:06] already spent so much time on.
[16:08] >> I wonder if they have this statistic for
[16:11] manh hours.
[16:14] Like, there's like Okay. Yeah, 50,000
[16:16] hours fast forwarded, whatever. But like
[16:19] each person is working on one building
[16:22] at a time and there's hundreds maybe
[16:24] thousands of people working on it as a
[16:26] community. I wonder if they if they have
[16:28] it logged like how many hours each
[16:30] person spent and aggregate it. That
[16:32] would be really interesting.
[16:33] >> This project and I'm definitely not
[16:34] stopping now. So we'll have to continue
[16:36] for a few more years until one day it's
[16:39] all finished. But we need your help. If
[16:42] you want to be part of it, jump on the
[16:44] server or support our work on the
[16:46] Patreon at patreon.com/buthe
[16:49] is just one city. But in build the
[16:51] earth, we are not just building New York
[16:52] City. We are building the entire world.
[16:55] And there's over 40 other teams out
[16:56] there helping to build every single
[16:58] country on Earth. Hability of Patreon.
[17:01] >> Do you guys think this project ever
[17:03] concludes
[17:06] that build the earth.net net. Like
[17:08] there's a bunch of different people
[17:09] trying to build like I I don't know. No,
[17:13] no, no, no. Does anyone believe? Yes.
[17:15] Yes. No. No. Like maybe Oh, yeah. Maybe
[17:19] with AI. If you get a AI on it. Bro,
[17:22] this is this project is just so massive.
[17:25] Um, a lot of people in the chat, uh,
[17:27] we're not talking
[17:28] >> every single country on Earth. Rhdy of
[17:30] Patreon also does not only include this
[17:32] map, of course. It also contains
[17:34] hundreds of other buildings and maps
[17:36] from across the globe as well. So, if
[17:38] you're curious, go check it out. But
[17:40] that's it [music] for now. If you like
[17:42] the video, make sure to give it a like
[17:44] and let me know which other parts of the
[17:46] city you want to see next. Thanks for
[17:48] watching and I'll see you in the next
[17:50] one. Cheers.
[17:54] Okay, that I mean that's as mind-blowing
[17:56] as the title of the video makes it seem.
[17:58] A lot of people in the chat were asking
[18:00] for the video link. Let me link it for
[18:02] you guys. And if you guys Yeah. want to
[18:05] check out the video link has like the to
[18:07] download and the Patreon and everything
[18:08] like that. That's crazy, guys. That that
[18:10] is I mean absolutely wild.