Gamification in Urban Planning: Participation Through Minecraft

The overall graduation rate for black male students in New York City was 58 percent in 2014 - student retention rates are equally poor. But one school achieved a 100% on-time graduation rate last year, motivating their students with a student-founded, student-sustained 'fraternity'.

While some parts of the United States struggle with drought, others are faced with more water than they know what to do with. Minnesota reconstructs roads and drainage systems in order to be more prepared for the large amounts of rain fall they have received, largely due to climate change.

Geography and climate change challenge the viability of sea-level cities in Vietnam, but architects, researchers, and urban planners work together to find creative solutions. One architect in Ho Chi Minh City designed green roofs to absorb the rainwater that causes floods.

A growing number of people in the famously crowded Tokyo metropolis are becoming ‘city farmers’, planting crops atop tall buildings or deep underground. In an age of detrimental climate change, urban cultivation and green roof agriculture will soon be necessary as food, water and energy resources become scarcer.

Game inventors have created a new game to help students who suffer from ADHD and other mental problems develop and stimulate their brains in a safer, more targeted way than normal medicines.

Passive houses can generate more energy than they consume but are expensive to build. Non-profits across the nation are getting low income families into these types of renewable homes with state subsidies and volunteer work.

Cities across the world, suffering from increased threats of floods and droughts due to climate change, are finding new ways to manage water, such as reclaiming natural waterways and increasing on spot water absorption.

In Saudi Arabia, female gamers were barred from gaming conventions so an all-female gaming convection was born, offering women a place of self expression and encouraging careers in science and computer programming.

Farmland is expensive and scarce in urban areas. In Boston Higher Ground Farm uses green roofs to grow its produce and Grove Lab has designed a cabinet for people to grow their vegetables indoors.

Too much solar and wind power in Germany is overloading their grid. A firm developed a new technology that uses super-fast batteries and software to hold intermittent wind and solar power when more than needed is generated.