Tutorials/Building a metropolis

A metropolis is a complete urban area with buildings and a dense population. As a project, players may find building a metropolis of their own to be an outstanding project, though it should be remembered that building a metropolis requires using a large number of resources and a lot of time.

This tutorial should only be a reference, not a step-by-step lecture. You should make up your own ideas along the way. When editing, keep the buildings list in alphabetical order. This tutorial is aimed for fantasy, medieval and modern buildings, feel free to find the tone that fits better for your world or multiplayer modded server.

Preparation
Before starting a metropolis, the player should decide on their project's theme, limitations, goals and tools. If the player needs help with finding a theme, there are suggestions down below. For some players, building a metropolis in Survival mode may be the most rewarding. Others may want to work on the project in Creative mode so they do not have to spend time gathering resources. To make building quicker and easier, the player may also want help in their project in the form of friends, commands and structure blocks or even third-party programs. Plans also have to account for what the project's future use is, who will view it and what will those viewers' needs are.

For most themes, the easiest location to build would be somewhere that is generally flat as it removes the need to clear-out large areas. Such an area can be found through a variety of ways including finding a generally-flat biome (such as plains and oceans) or loading a different world type such as superflat or buffet. The player could also use a third-party program such as WorldEdit, MCEdit, VoxelSniper, and WorldPainter to clear an area. The theme may work best in specific biome and the terrain generations, and as such, the player will need to consider those things while finding/preparing an area.

If the player plans on building their project in Survival mode, they should ensure they have the basic materials they need to keep the project going, such as good tools and armor, food, and perhaps even a beacon or scaffolding. The player also needs methods to collect all the blocks they will need for building their project. As such, they may want to try using more common blocks.

Getting started
The player should start planning out where a couple of large features of the city will go before they begin building. Then they can ensure they and any other players can begin building the structures. The player should note that their first buildings will most likely end up near the center of their metropolis.

Before building, it's best for the player to know what blocks to use in their theme. A project will usually look better if similar blocks are used near each other. The best blocks to use together will vary throughout the build, but generally the block types used will gradually shift from area to area. Lighting should be remembered throughout the build. Building interiors are something the player may want to work as well. If the metropolis will be used for a multiplayer world or custom map, the player probably should be careful to not use blocks in their builds which players can easily abuse. This includes making builds not easily grief-able. Also, the player should plan for the residents of their town. The needs of villagers are different than those of a couple of friends.

The player may also want to avoid overusing rare and hard to acquire blocks such as emerald, gold, and diamond since they work best as attention draws to areas such as spires, corners, or doors and not for main building materials.

Materials
Minecraft has a variety of blocks and ornaments you may use. Try to find a color that matches the theme.

Building Up
Important to the building will be consistency and planning. Planning can be anything from a simple bullet list of materials needed to a full-scale blueprint of all the aspects of the metropolis. It's best if a town can keep its theming, block choices, sizes, and areas somewhat similar between buildings. The player should make sure that their first buildings and roads are close in size and appearance to how they want the rest of the city to be. Part of a natural city flow are zones--different areas which better fulfill certain needs for town members than other areas. If the player allows the city to develop into zones as it is built, the city will appear more natural. Building outward and in zones allows different portions of the metropolis to have a different feel to the builds as different building heights, materials, and the amount of space changes. Planning of where to place and how large to make certain zones should ensure that the build fulfills the needs of any actual or imagined residents of the metropolis.

The rest of this section focuses on some general zones which a town may find beneficial to include.

Roads and Paths
An important piece of planning and building a metropolis is the roads. Roads and pathways connect all the buildings and zones together and usually act to keep a sense of order to the space. Generally, larger areas should include more orderly roads while smaller spaces should have rougher, more mixed pathways. The sizes of roads should also differ by area to fit the spacing of buildings. For this reason, roads should generally be created as needed and not used to force buildings to follow their path. Materials such as cobblestone, coal blocks, obsidian, gravel, stone, sandstone, nether bricks, concrete, grass paths, and terracotta are all popular blocks for roads and paths. Roads can also be decorated with plants, road lines, and lights. Generally, paths should be fairly flat so they can be easily used for quick travel. Adding options for travel along different roads such as minecart rails, ice lanes, or even just fences to tie horses to can increase the efficiency of roads. If you make a tunnel, it should be at least three blocks tall so players riding horses can use it. You should also be able to navigate the roads easily.

Scale
You should also consider what scale your city is. A smaller-scale city will be faster to build and consume less resources, but a larger-scale city can be more detailed. In a larger-scale city, it is also possible to construct interiors to the buildings, which is not possible in smaller scale.

Lighting
One light source for a metropolis is lampposts. A lamppost can be built with a redstone lamp hooked up to an inverted daylight detector so that the lamp will turn on when it gets dark. You can also use a torch, as you can put them in houses. Another indoor lighting trick is to put the light source under carpets. The source of light will be hidden from sight, but the light will still shine through the carpets.

Residential Zone
Primarily a metropolis needs to have places for its citizens to live. Generally, these areas should be large, yet organized. Smaller roads, shorter buildings, more greenery, and small blocks keep the area more friendly while the opposite create a larger, busier feel. Most residential areas will keep houses spaced close together. Some areas may work best with tall apartments. A residential zone usually feels more lively if the player includes a couple of small shops in the area. Some shops can be added as part of a living space. When working with multiple players, it may work best to allow players to build their own housing.

The deeper within the city, the more urbanized the housing generally should be with larger buildings. If the metropolis works well with it, smaller, single housing can make up surrounding suburbs and even further out rural zones can allow large swaths of land to be lived in by a very spread out population.

Commercial Zone
These zones are for trade such as through markets, shops, malls, restaurants, or grocery stores. Trade allows for citizens of a city to get all types of items and services without having to specifically work for each type of item or service. Some shops work better mixed in with residential zones. A commercial zone can allow for lots of shops to be clustered together and for large stores to be neatly separated from the housing. If the citizens are players, commercial zones can create extra opportunities for player interactions.

Public Transportation and Transit Stations
Since a metropolis should be quite large, efficient transportation is important to keep the city together. Public transportation hubs can create efficient travel. Some cities might work best with ice roads, minecart rails, or piston bolts. Some metropolises might work best using the Nether to decrease the distance between places. Command blocks with commands could teleport players when triggered. Infrastructure fitting to the theme of the metropolis should also be used to give more life to the city.

Industrial Zone
Mass production greatly decreases the space needed for many people to live, but it isn't the prettiest sight. Nobody likes to have a house with cluttered views of smog-belching factories, so make sure your industrial zone is not next to any nicer houses, and preferably none that are owned by those who don't work in the industrial zone. Plan a green area in the 100 blocks, or maybe a river. Industrial zones keep giant farms or mass production plants away from where residents live. If the farms or mob farms actually produce items, this also may reduce lag by keeping these large, item creating structures unloaded when unneeded. These areas are generally best kept further from any type of residential or commercial zone since their function is often practicality over appearance.

Capitol
A city really can appear to have more pride just by adding a capitol area. Adding larger, flashier buildings to stick out in the city skyline adds perceived power to the city. The area can be easily decorated with many statues and monuments. Such areas are usually more expensive to live in, so rarer materials fit into the block pallet well.

Suggestions
Here are some ideas to help the player get started on their city. You can mix and match multiple, e.g. a disordered Hyrule populated by animals.

A - D

 * Ancient Civilization: Using a style based off of historical civilizations such as ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, native American villages, English colonies, wild west settlements, medieval cities or caveman life can allow for some fun block choices and zoning. Game block choices also match up easier with older time periods, so using such a style may save the player the difficulty of creating modern objects in-game. Creating a metropolis based off of ancient civilizations can help the player understand old challenges and history.
 * Biome Dependent: A city's features could be directly based off of its land. Buildings and roads would then remind the player of where they are no matter the biome or land features.
 * Block Limitations: To force more creative use of specific blocks (especially important since using fewer blocks improves the quality appearance of a build), the player could force themselves to only use specific blocks and/or not use certain or almost all blocks they often do use. Sometimes, using only specific blocks could act as a way of theming or adding a story to the city. Possible limitations might limit the material, color, or rarities of blocks used. Another variant is to only use blocks available in a certain version, for example only building with blocks available in Classic.


 * Cloud City: Build your city in the sky. Use snow or wool for buildings and use glass for the street. You can build the ground out of white blocks to look like clouds, and maybe even actually build it at cloud level. It is possible to make "rain clouds" by hiding water inside artificial clouds made, for example, from wool. This will cause dripping water to appear on the bottom of the cloud. (Another option is to use mods that add actual cloud blocks.)


 * Cultural Obsession: The citizens of a city could have a common obsession. Whether it be a sport, craft, or trend the city could reflect that through its decorations. This gives the player opportunities to create many different decorations. It also adds a personality to the city, since it can be somewhat seen what is important to the citizens of the metropolis.


 * Disorder: If the player makes certain areas disordered while creating them, they can add a special story to parts of the city and make something unusual. The player could also make a point of making a certain feature to always appear disordered such as city walls.


 * Dome City: Build your city completely out of domes. The domes can be floating, on the ground or underwater, and can be made out of glass or any other material. You can connect the domes with bridges or tunnels, and make each house a small dome.

E - H

 * East Asian City: Base your domain around Asian architecture. Add a statues of Chinese dragons, pagodas and some junks in your harbor. Add lots of bamboo around the city and spawn some pandas to make the city's surroundings more lively. Make sure to style your city around the East Asian region or nation you've chosen to base your metropolis around.


 * Ecumenopolis: Turn the whole world into a ecumenopolis (read: an extremely big city), stretching from bedrock level to the world height limit. At the top, there could be high-rise penthouses with panoramic windows, while at the bottom, there are slums and gang headquarters. If you have limited time or resources, you can skip the underground part and just make your city a colossal skyscraper. Regardless of how you do it, this project will be very time-consuming in Survival mode.


 * Electric City: Use nothing but redstone! Build out of redstone blocks and use iron doors. Also use lots of complicated redstone mechanisms, like doorbells, elevators, and flashing indicator lights. Use flying machines and minecart subways for player transportation and an item transportation system for post services. Try using redstone for defense too, like hooking up dispenser machine guns and "spike traps" made by arrows shooting out of the ground. Tech mods like IndustrialCraft2, EnderIO, Applied Energistics 2, and Thermal Foundation/Expansion/Dynamics also can enhance this city. Iron golems fit well in this city, due to their robot-like appearance.


 * End Fortress: Build a massive version of end cities in the End using mostly the materials found there, such as end stone bricks, obsidian and purpur. Build rooms and entrances at least three blocks high to allow enderman to enter and build three block long "beds" from wool blocks. Use shulker boxes and ender chests for storage. Add end crystals for mysterious-looking decoration, but be careful to not blow them up. Inhabitants should either have black and purple clothes or just be endermen. Add a chorus plant farm, a harbor for end ships and high towers for flying with elytra. Use end rods for lighting. Outlaw water, and if your rules ever require executions, do it by knocking people into the Void.


 * Empire: Instead of building just one city, build a lot of cities. Make one city to be larger than others, and make it the capital of the empire. Connect the cities with roads or a minecart network. Add smaller villages and farms outside the larger cities. If you want a more militant country, build huge walls around the borders, build many large military bases and add battle damage or wipe entire cities off the map with TNT to make it look like they were conquered.


 * Flame City Make a town and set it on fire. Netherrack and magma blocks are good for this purpose. Use lava in places where water would normally be found. For example, fill any wells, rivers and ponds in your city with lava. Striders are one possibility for transportation, but make sure they won't be exposed to rain, as it damages them. Make the population blazes and magma cubes. Possibly, you could also allow players with Fire Protection armor or ample potions of Fire Resistance to visit from time to time. You can also use mycelium instead of grass and gray concrete powder instead of sand because they look like ash (you can also use basalt as burnt logs). You can also outlaw water, and if you need to execute somebody, do it by burning them alive. Make sure not to build with any flammable blocks, for obvious reasons.


 * Floating: Make a city on the water, preferably on the middle of an ocean, as there is most space for this city type. The houses could be boats or rafts, and the main building could be a big flagship. The city can be also built on a large, floating platform on the top layer of water, so it looks like it is floating on water. For transportation, you could build a nether portal in the city, build another nether portal in the mainland, and in the nether. After doing so, build a railroad there to the other portal. Boats are also a good form of transportation in this city type. The city can be also built inside a single, giant ship. If you choose to make only one giant ship, you can fill it with animals of all kinds, to make it resemble the Noah's Ark.


 * Forest: Build your city in a forest, but rather than cutting the trees down, build your city on top of them, construct some hollow giant trees with logs, bark, stripped logs and stripped bark blocks and build inside them, and make buildings to hang from the trees or wrap around them. You can connect the trees with wooden bridges. This city can be quite easy to hide, if you use blocks that look like wood or leaves. For added stealth have your citizens wear brown or green leather armor or use brown or green skins. If you want to defend this city, construct hideouts in the trees for archers. Using lava or fire is heavily discouraged, as almost everything in this city is flammable. The best place to build this is the jungle biome, due to the abundance of trees there, but any kind of forest works.




 * Forge-City: Build a city entirely around producing things from raw materials. Mods are optional, but ones with 'industrial'-style machines and textures will be the best. Heavily advised that you build near large ore deposits. Architecture should be mostly "Industrial": use a lot of iron blocks and paving, try and create a grimy, dirty, polluted feeling around the city as a whole. Factories, forges, power plants, and research labs should be the main sort of building style - you may want to include such details as smokestacks with either black wool or cobweb pouring out of the top, or have a campfire inside them producing real smoke, and have glass-covered channels of lava running into factories to stand for molten metal. Heavy use of redstone mechanisms for doors and transport is advised - try setting up redstone-powered rails with minecarts on. Large logistics networks should be set up - minecart trains carrying ore from mines to the smelters, carrying food from farms to processing plants, etc. Everyone has to work, as a worker in one of the factories or as a guard for the city - anyone who won't is to be either exiled from the city or killed. You can also add several iron golems to guard the city. Due to their robotic look, they fit very well in the industrial theme. Workers should have their performance at work tracked, either through a mod or a server rule. As an example, if they work at an iron-smelting plant, the furnaces there should record how many ores to ingots a player has smelted in one in-game day, and how many things they have crafted while in the factory. The same can be applied to mines and farms, though this should track the blocks of ore/stone and crops harvested, respectively. Gunpowder, TNT, weapons, etc. should be closely guarded - workers within reach of these items should have their quarters checked regularly by guards for evidence of them. The city should be divided into zones, as below:
 * Housing = As it says on the tin. This is where the workers of the city should be housed, in large apartment-style buildings. One room per player, with the room size and quality is determined on the player's status and work performance - admins get larger houses in 'Private' zones by default, regular players have their room size and quality based on their individual work output. Higher work output also means more privileges: workers with high output are allowed to keep things like brewing stands and anvils in their housing, along with the potion ingredients. Mining of blocks for regular users is forbidden unless they are specifically given the privilege to do so. Should have a functional, but haphazard aesthetic - try having a mix of materials for each building, with a focus on 'waste' blocks from the Industrial areas.
 * Industrial = Factories, mines, and workshops galore. This should comprise the bulk of the city, with housing being located close to the Industrial zones. This is where the industrial/polluted aesthetic should be at its highest, with a particular focus on the logistics and transport network. Warehouses should also be here, connected by either manual or automated minecarts to the mines and factories.
 * Private = This should be an area entirely separate from the other areas of the city - consider walling it off in a bedrock cube-style structure, and having the only way in or out guarded by iron/diamond weapon and armor equipped soldiers. This place should be used solely for debate among the admins and as a place where players can bring non-report-worthy complaints against other players or admins. The internal structure of the Private area should be more richly decorated - statues, paintings, gold and diamond blocks, etc. should be in abundance.
 * Research = As the name implies, this zone should be dedicated to research and development. Buildings here should mostly have an appearance between that of a lab and a temple, with certain workers being given the ability to 'research' new technologies. In a practical sense, this means testing new building configurations, trying out redstone circuits, creating potions, and recording the results of them all via a book in-game. If bacteria or nuclear mods are present, try and build a few breeding labs or similar here.
 * Military = The soldiers of the city should be housed here, along with the weapon and armor storage. This place should bear signs of heavy fortifications, such as high, multi-layer walls, lava trenches, TNT cannons, and a generally hazardous nature to anyone unfamiliar with it.
 * It's best to use a Technocratic government for this city/server: the top admin should have authority over the entire server, and all forge-cities on it. Beneath this, the other admins rule over the remaining forge-cities, with the admin's position in terms of influence/power over the server being determined based on the resource output of their city. Cities should be free to trade with each other, and try and strike deals with each other - backstabbing a weaker city and taking it over entirely is expected. If a city falls, the admin responsible for the fallen city will be allowed to join the victor's city (albeit with their powers determined by the victorious rival) or become a simple player. If desired, smaller towns can be established in the no-man's-land between cities and occasionally raided for resources/worked with for labor.


 * Generated Structure-Based: Find a generated structure, like a village, stronghold or woodland mansion, and expand it into a city. Sometimes, the generated structure might need some modifications before being inhabitable, as some generated structures don't have light sources, might have monster spawners or traps, and might be even partially ruined.


 * Giant City: Make a gigantic city! Build giant buildings, preferably skyscrapers, and have sugar cane, cactus, and tree farms. To cap it off, have the whole population be endermen, and, if you have cheats enabled, giants. (Be sure to have high entryways so your residents can get in and out.)


 * Heavenly City: Make the city seem divine, using quartz, give each citizen an elytra to make everyone look like angels and maybe build the city in the sky. You also might make a Nether city with a few adjustments to make it look like Hell, and build a guarded portal as a connection between the cities.


 * Hide-Away City: Build the entire city out of blocks that disappear if a player is too far away from it. Examples are chests, shulker boxes, item frames, and banners. It may be expensive, but it's worth the surprise factor when an entire city suddenly pops into existence.


 * Hole/Cliff City: Make a deep and 1×1 wide hole to the bedrock. Next, fill it with the TNT and detonate it. You will create a very deep hole. Make buildings on the hole's walls and bridges to transport from house to house. Note: Hostile mobs can spawn in this city, as it can be dark. It is recommended to do it on superflat preset Tunneller's Dream)


 * Holiday Focus: The town could be built based on a specific holiday or season such as Christmas or Autumn. The entire city could have small ways of reminding the other players about that specific focus through the decorations and details of the city.


 * Hyrule: Hyrule is a kingdom from the Legend of Zelda video games. It is a medieval-style fantasy kingdom. The technology is not very advanced, and magic is common, so you don't need to use a lot of redstone, and you could use command blocks or console commands to give the effect of magic. Minecarts could also be used as the primary means for transportation. The kingdom may be ruled by a single ruler, typically Princess Zelda in the games, and there could be some hidden evil, ready to take over the kingdom, that needs to be dealt with.

I - M

 * Igloo Village: Make a village out of snow. Packed ice and blue ice can also be used. Using normal ice isn't recommended, as it will melt in light. Make all of the buildings dome-shaped, and place snow golems and tamed wolves around the village for protection. This is a very easy village to build and gather resources for, but it is vulnerable to mobs. If you are using Creative mode, the "Snowy Kingdom" Superflat preset with a few extra layers of stone is ideal.


 * Invisible City: Make everything in your city made of glass blocks, glass panes, barriers, and/or ice, with no doors for your buildings. However, leave the ground grass, snow, or whatever block it already is. Building an invisible city is pretty risky though, as you can't use any lights, so monsters can spawn in your city. Because of this, it's best to build this city in Peaceful mode, or use the  command to make it always day.


 * Industry: For this theme, you may want to limit the citizen population, mainly having workers. The buildings may be made of grimy metal (and possibly stone) and there could be a limited number of buildings that are not for work. The buildings would be huge, with gears, belts and drums to hold goods and you can put security features in place to prevent people from outside or from other cities from seeing (or even stealing!) what you're making. This kind of city might be quite competitive, trying to outsell or accumulate more wealth than other places. It could be run by a mad doctor (e.g. Dr. Robotnik), a dictator or just a greedy mayor.


 * Impoverished Land: Instead of creating a land of opulent wealth, an interesting challenge may be to make a land of the poor. Instead of large buildings and roads full of expensive materials, the city might be filled with smaller huts squeezed into each other and made with simple resources. The city could be a refreshing build as it moves away from the normal order most cities have.


 * Island: Find an ocean in the middle of nowhere, or just use the water world in Superflat and reduce the amount of water. Then start building an island, or use a natural one, if you aren't on a superflat, and make the buildings look like you would see them at a real city on an island. Make a coastal city with miles of beaches and beautiful scenery, try imitating palm trees and above all, make thousands of tourist hotels. Don't forget to build a port that connects the island with the outside world.


 * Killer City: Make a huge city surrounded by a brick wall. Try and make it as scary-looking as possible, with armor and weapon factories, lots of smog, and some lava if you're feeling good. Also add TNT cannons facing outward beyond the wall, dispensers filled with poison or harming tipped arrows facing out, and armed guards patrolling everywhere. You could also add Iron Golems for some added protection help. If you're playing on a server, constantly attack and overtake other cities, villages, or fortresses. Loot them, and then leave them ruined.


 * Magic City: Make buildings in your city have brewing stands, cauldrons, and enchantment tables, and make stores. Magic cities sell potions, potion ingredients, enchantment tables, brewing stands, cauldrons, enchanted armor, bottles o' enchanting, ender chests, and enchanted books. Also, place ender chests instead of regular chests. Use witches, evokers and illusioners for inhabitants on singleplayer for fun, but they will kill you on Survival. Build multiple portals and possibly expand the city into other dimensions. Magic mods like Thaumcraft, Botania, and Witchery work very well in this theme.


 * Mario World: Make this city revolve around the Mario games and media. Build houses in huge mushrooms to mimic the Toad Houses from the games. If you have a roleplay server, you could have each citizen pick a character from the Mario series to portray. Make sure they stay in character, otherwise it might ruin the experience for everybody else. For a more Mario-ish experience, you can't forget Bowser! Get a player (or mob) to be Bowser and have them take on any moustache-wearing heroes who travel to their castle. If you play Minecraft on a Nintendo console try using the Super Mario Mashup Pack.


 * Maze: Make your city a maze, that is, make it hard to go through without getting lost. Make your city hall/capitol in the middle of your maze city.


 * Mechanus: Have this city be absolute order, with complex gears grinding above it. No building can be chaotic in any way, and they are all in mint condition. Otherwise, this can follow any other type except ones that are inherently chaotic, such as an Elven city. The government is a very strict hierarchy.


 *  Mineral:  Create your city using only iron, redstone, lapis lazuli, gold, emerald, diamond, netherite and quartz blocks. But you don't have to only use those blocks. Expand a little by using obsidian, stone, granite, andesite and diorite.


 * Mob Town: Creating a town for non-human creatures can add extra creativity for a build. The player would need to figure out how animals or other creatures would live in a city environment. Sometimes this would require a different space for the city such as underground tunnels, high in the sky or space, or deep underwater. It might be even necessary to build the city in another dimension. Since different mobs live in very different environments, it might be easiest to make the entire city devoted to just one or two mobs. It could also be devoted to just one type of mob (passive, neutral, or hostile). A city inhabitated by hostile mobs will likely be a very dangerous place, so it might be a good idea to add some warning signs outside the city and possibly even surround it with walls. Needs and desires need to be met for those odd citizens, so the player can put their creativity to the test to meld the life of humans to other creatures. The citizens could be primarily anthropomorphic animals, and in that case, you could invite players with animal skins to join, or it could be for regular creatures.


 * Modern: Just build your city like a city you would see in real life today. Make skyscrapers, train stations, apartments, office buildings, cars, and more!


 * Movie Town: Make a city/town/village based on a place in your favorite movie or a movie that you liked. It can also be a place from a video game, TV show, or book. Here are some ideas to get you started:


 * Bricksburg: Everything is awesome here! Place signs everywhere to tell people what and what not to do. Have security cameras to keep an eye on everyone, and if citizens see anything weird, they should report it immediately! Use a LEGO resource pack to make things look as though they're 100% LEGO brick. If you REALLY want to get into The LEGO Movie spirit, put in a big, black thing that blocks out the sun, with Tentacle Arm Kragle Outside Sprayers that freeze players in place, or even have "Everything is Awesome!" playing throughout the city using note blocks!


 * Futurama: Build a city based on the old TV show Futurama! Build in a retro-futuristic style and have the "old city" in the sewer system. Have potion-powered robots (potion-powered due to Minecraft's lack of alcohol), flying machines in lieu of wheeled vehicles (this basically means no minecarts), and also the occasional head that can be engaged in a conversation with players (this can be done using command blocks). Please note that this would be intended for older players, as sitcoms can be a bit...mature.


 * A galaxy far far away: Make a city based on Star Wars. Have sections (planets) and recreate scenes from the movies. Have a Death Star too and have a war between the empire and the rebellion. You can even find Star Wars skins and texture packs online! You can also use a lightsaber mod and battle it out.


 * Harry Potter inspired: Make your city Harry Potter themed. Make your downtown Diagon Alley, have the Hogsmeade village, if you have a bank, make it Gringotts, and if you have a school make it, of course, Hogwarts. For Hogwarts' exterior, add the Black Lake, as well as the Forbidden Forest.


 * Panem: Hunger Games! Have a city with separate districts for each industry (e.g., mining, lumber, crafting, fishing) and one rich city to rule over them. Every once in a while, have two people from each district fight to the death while the rich city watches.


 * Robot City: Not to be confused with the Robot City below, this city is based on Robot City from the 2005 film Robots. Have a high-end district where residents are rich, famous, and shiny (this can be done by wearing iron armor), and buildings are shiny and futuristic; a combustion district where there are numerous "rust spots" and residents are rusty (have players wear colored leather armor to achieve this effect); and a steam district where some parts resemble the machines of the Industrial Revolution, with broken things everywhere, and a "Chop Shop" where players caught by "sweepers" (minecarts) are put on a conveyor belt, damaged, and eventually incinerated.


 * Shire: For Lord of the Rings fans, you could build your buildings out of dirt, grass blocks, and entire trees to make Hobbit-holes! Build it either in the plains or a forest. Make sure to add lots of foliage, because, in every film depiction, there are flowers all over the place. Make the inside of your Hobbit-holes very cozy, but not too elaborate. Be sure to make windows and doors round, and ceilings low! Small hills work best for building Hobbit-holes.


 * Zootopia: Like the "Multi-Biome City" below, this is based on the movie Zootopia. Build districts like "Tundratown", "Sahara Square", "Little Rodentia", (see "Tiny Town" below) et cetera. Have residents wear skins based on characters from the movie, maybe even with potion effects (Jump Boost for rabbits like Judy, Slowness for sloths like Flash, etc.).


 * Multi-Biome City: When you make your city have sections for each biome. Sections could be snowy, desert, forest, swamp, jungle, savanna, or the badlands. Have buildings built out of the native materials in each biome, e.g. build houses out of stained terracotta.


 * Mushroom City: Build your city on the top of huge mushrooms connected with bridges and build some of the houses inside red huge mushrooms. This works in most biomes, but the best place for this is the mushroom island biome.


 * Mythical Location: The player could recreate some location from mythology, a book or movie series, a fairy tale, or a video game. The city may need to be set in a specific biome or area such as underwater. The details from the source could be carefully added into the city to let other players feel as if they have really stepped into the recreated world. Many details may need to be imagined up by the player since most fictional sources cannot capture the full extent of details in the worlds they create.

N - R

 * Nether City: Build your city in the Nether. Use materials found in Nether, such as nether bricks, red nether bricks and warped and crimson planks. You can also build the city around a nether fortress or bastion remnant, using the structures as the basis of your city. You can have piglins living in this city. Farm hoglins for food and use striders for mounts. Use lava, glowstone and other materials naturally found in Nether for illumination.


 * Other Worldly: A metropolis could be made to exist as if in a different world or dimension. As such, the city should have elements depending on the special rules of that dimension. For example, the world could have weird gravity, special technology, exist on clouds or be entirely made out of candy. The way a city functions within a different world would have to be fully considered while creating the metropolis and add many opportunities for creativity.


 * Panzerstadt/War Machine: Build your city with many military buildings and factories then use a highly resistant block (bedrock, obsidian, etc.) and cover the outer city with it. Then build some TNT cannons to fire at hostile mobs or destroy player bases. Also, you could add a 'police force' of iron and snow golems.

You could try to build it on tiers like this:
 * 1-4 Civilian and poor housing. Add a lot of TNT cannons so the population is well defended.
 * 5-7 Factories and middle-class housing. A few TNT cannons would be useful about.
 * 8-10 Rich houses and maybe PVP (player vs player) or mob vs player arena.
 * 11+ Your choice!


 * Peaceful Place: Make a city with passive mobs. Put pretty things like flowers, and make the whole population passive mobs. You can build homes out of whatever you want. You can decide whether other players can live there and if shearing sheep is legal. One thing that is illegal, however, is killing anything in the town. If a player does this, they must find or create a new mob of the same type. (If you have any wolves and they kill the mob, you still have to find a new one to replace it.) Taming is legal and is rewarded with cooked meat, the only legal way to obtain this. Note: Do not build this near a hostile hub! Build a high wall, about 4+ blocks high, to keep them out. Also, is a wild wolf is hit, the smacker must lead it back into the wild or into a hostile hub (since it's now technically a hostile mob). It is recommended dividing the Peaceful Place into two parts; one for the hunters (wild ocelots and wolves) and one for the mobs that will never attack (chickens, tame wolves (unless you smack a mob), rabbits, etc.). That way, you won't have to deal with your residents being killed.


 * Planet City: For a cool twist, make spheres somewhere in the sky with a world-editing tool (such as WorldEdit), and then build your buildings on the top! Be sure to only make one building per planet, though, as it is difficult to make multiple buildings on a planet. Bridges or teleportation hubs are recommended. If you are in singleplayer, make a moon of end stone and slimes as aliens!


 * Popup City: Use redstone to make the city pop up out of the ground. Bonus if it retracts back into the ground! You can stop interiors from collapsing by placing carpets inside. The redstone may be complex, and the city may look messy, but it would provide for an amazing surprise to anyone trying to attack you.


 * Rainbow City: This could be made in the sky and should be a lot of different colors, also you could put "rainbow bridges" to get from one cloud to another. Stained glass works well for this. Any sheep you may have should be dyed rainbow colors as well or on java edition name sheep jeb to make their wool all the colors of the rainbow. Also, have everyone wear rainbow colored skins. You could also have everyone wear dyed leather armor, as that might be easier then only allowing players in with colored skins. Have different sections in your city, such as a Red Area, Green Area, etc.


 * Rough/1984/Dictatorship City: Your city would have a big and rich place in the middle where people can get anything they want for much pretty free. The rich part of town would have a high wall protecting it. The rest of the city would be for the poor. Its inhabitants work very hard for little pay and would be kept under close guard, being treated like animals, and having its children used as spies, even on their own parents. You could even have walls around this part of the city to keep people from running away. For a more dramatic flair, spark a rebellion in the poor part of the city and watch its dictator topple. This type of city would be best created if you have read George Orwell's book 1984 so you know what it feels like.


 * Ruins: The city could have sections that feel old and forgotten, or at least not maintained. Rougher textured blocks, soil, and plants can be added to create overgrown or damaged feels to city areas. The player could also use less light to make the sections appear dark. Larger ruins could have holes, missing windows and doors, entrances blocked by debris and piles of blocks which could appear to come from other parts of the ruins. Whilst ruins usually are abandoned, they don't necessarily have to be. If the city was destroyed in a disaster, survivors of the disaster might be still be living in the ruins. You can also populate the city with zombies and skeletons. For more heavily ruined city, build a city in any kind of genre you choose, then use lots of explosives or fire to destroy most of it. This city build is only for players willing to go to a lot of work and then basically destroy it all, even if it does look kind of cool. If you want to, you can make it a sort of treasure trove or explorable structure. You can add chests and secret rooms in the ruins. Features of the city could hint at why the area is in ruin such as disease, population shift, disaster or just poor management.

S - U

 * Seaport: Think back to the time of pirates and sea shanties, and build off of that. Be sure to add ships off in the distance, lighthouses, docks, and a tavern or two. Add some parrots and dolphins to make the port more lively. You can also fit the ships with TNT cannons.


 * Shrunk: The inhabitants of the city may appear normal-sized to the player, but they would exist in this scenario as tiny people in a giant world. Part of creating such a city would be making the area around the city to show how small the inhabitants of the city are. Plant large jungle or spruce trees around the city, and spawn giants and huge slimes with using commands. You can also build large statues depicting other mobs.


 * Sky: Make a normal city using one of the ideas above (or below) but add something that will make it float (an anti-gravity engine, several jet engines, etc.) in the air.
 * Soviet: Center your city around a grand square for the government, and construct wide roads and tall concrete buildings for the city's inhabitants. Always include statues of the leader and pixel art illustrating the glory of socialism. Your city should also have an extensive metro system, as well as parks, athletic centers, public bathhouses, and schools, all using one or two materials. The outskirts of the city should consist of large wheat fields and collective farms. Lastly, build a system of prisons and labor camps for the criminals.


 * Space: Build your city at layer 200 and make the roads obsidian and the buildings iron blocks and stone slabs. Add a lot of redstone circuits to your city. You can also add wormholes (Nether portals) and lasers (flowing lava) to your city. To make it more space-like, you can surround your city in black wool or black terracotta and make some floating masses of stone for asteroids. You can also build spaceports in your city, containing multiple small and a few larger spaceships, and maybe even use a mod to make these spaceships driveable. Go through at least one of your "wormholes", and then expand your city into the Nether. It will look like space at night, as because of a glitch the sun will appear opposite the moon. You can also use minecarts, rails, powered rails and detector rails for futuristic transport systems and command blocks, so it can stay the night time. You can also build the city in the End for more realistic "space", but this will prevent you from building the wormholes, as Nether portals don't work in End, and the Endermen that spawn there will ruin everything you build there, unless you use commands to prevent mob griefing.
 * Special Feature: The town could, like Venice, Italy, have a special feature. Features could include the city being connected by waterways like the aforementioned Venice, be underwater, underground, hanging from some roof, supported on arches and stilts over the land, be filled with or surrounded by walls, or be deep underground. Fitting such a theme adds a unique element to the metropolis.


 * Spooky: For a good setting, build your city in the middle of a very large swamp, killing all peaceful mobs and getting rid of anything which would make the atmosphere less spooky, such as colorful flowers. You should use false, and then set the time to night, it looks even better if it happens to be a full moon or new moon. For extra effect, you can also use the  on a repeating command block to create a permanent thunderstorm. Use dark and dilapitated-looking materials for buildings. It is even better if you use stairs and slabs to make it all look like broken masonry. There could be several graveyards (with spawners under tombstones if you want), flooded houses, trampled farms, or anything that would make the place looks really creepy. You can have dark caves right under the city, which produce ambience noises, or use command blocks to produce them. Add shrines and dungeons and maybe right in the middle of the city, you could add Herobrine's castle. If you are bad at building castles, just make a giant statue of him. You could inhabit it with hostile mobs (preferably Overworld mobs: undead mobs, spiders, and witches).


 * Steampunk: Make a flying city which is "supported" by giant fans, use lots of iron blocks and have factories with cobwebs coming out of chimneys for smoke. Spruce wood and gold blocks also look steampunk-esque.


 * Stranger Things inspired: Make your city Hawkins from the TV show Stranger Things: have the woods, the quarry with the giant cliffs and the lake, the Byers' house, the school, and of course, Hawkin's Lab. You can even have a portal to the Nether in Hawkin's lab, and completely transform the dimension into the Upside-Down.


 * Sunken city: Build a ruined city underwater. You can build it in ancient Greek style if you want it be Atlantis-like, but any style works. This should probably be done in creative, unless you have a huge amount of potions of water breathing or conduits to help you breathe underwater. This city type won't be very habitable, except for drowned.


 * Teeny Town: Make a little, tiny town! Make the whole population one-block-tall mobs and cave spiders, spiders, small and/or tiny slimes, small and/or tiny magma cubes, and silverfish. Make small houses (you may even think of putting the dragon egg as a roof) out of fences, slabs, pressure plates, and carpet, using fence gates as doors. Use ferns and dead bushes for a touch of plant life. You can also use saplings, but be sure to put them in flower pots, or they'll grow into trees, which are far too big for a town of this scale unless you want a giant redwood forest. If you want to add a touch of Dr. Seuss, place down some alliums to represent Truffula trees. Don't put tall mobs in! Tall mobs are mobs that are at least 2 blocks high, and that includes the player. Coincidentally, as of Java Edition 1.8, the spawn on the seed "Tiny Town" is perfectly suited for such a town. Forge Microblocks is a great mod to help detail this city.


 * The Settlement: Make log cabins, and instead of shops have general stores and saloons! Another idea is to build a jail for grievers and ride only horses!


 * Trap City: Fill your city with traps.


 * Twin Cities: Have two cities next to each other. They could be deadly enemies or a city where the rich live and another where the poor live. Alternatively, they could be opposites, like an Electric and Magic city, an Evil Draconic and Good Draconic city, or an Elven/Elvish and Dwarven/Dwarvish city.


 * Underground: Build your entire city underground. One way to do this is by building a network of tunnels where the people live. The city can become quite maze-like if done this way. You can also build the city in a cave. If you want to do this, you will need to create an artificial cave, as the naturally occurring ones are too small for a city. An interesting twist is to have the buildings hang from the roof of the cave. One way to do the lighting system is to connect daylight sensors to redstone lamps, or if the cave is close to surface, building a giant skylight out of glass. It is also possible to build this city inside a mountain, and if you choose to do so, it is possible to have windows on some of the walls as well. This city could also have a few mines in it. A city built underground will be quite easy to defend and even easier to hide, unless you chose to build the giant skyglass, as only the entrance will be visible to the surface. If you want the city even more fortified, don't build any entrances leading to the surface and make the only entrance through a nether portal. Lava fits well to an underground city, and can be used for both defense and a light source.


 * Underwater: This city can be very difficult to build, especially in survival, so it's recommended for experienced builders. Build your city in a giant underwater glass dome. Another way to do this is to build lots of small domes, or otherwise normal, but waterproof houses, connected with clean-looking or transparent blocks. The food industry should be dominated by markets that sell fish from local piers, unless you export land animals and plants in the city and make farms. The entrances should be waterproof, possibly made with doors or trapdoors. It is also possible to make the entrance an underground tunnel leading to land, or a vertical tube with a staircase inside leading to the sea level. This city should be quite easy to defend against attackers, assuming you build it deep enough, as any potential attacker would need potions of water breathing just to reach it.
 * Unstable: The easily destroyed nature of certain blocks such as TNT or flammable blocks would make a city built out of such blocks entertaining. Backups of the world can be made so the city can be destroyed for the player's entertainment.


 * Upside-Down: Forget logic! Make your city upside down! Make a giant ceiling, then construct the buildings literally from top to bottom. Have all decorations, such as chairs, tables, or TVs upside down. As for the roads, you can use over-hanging bridges to connect the buildings, or you can use a Railway system. If you can fit creatures inside your upside down houses you can rename them with a "Dinnerbone" name-tag and they will be upside down! Use the flip shader for help. Careful- it's crazy upside-down!


 * Utopia/Amaurot The opposite of the 1984 city! Build in a square formation, with wide streets. Have all the houses be flat-roofed and uniform enough that a side of a street looks like one house, with lush, fruitful gardens behind each house. Fortify the city with walls and outside the walls put ditches filled with cactus. Divide the city into four sections, with a marketplace in the middle. Have places outside the town for slaughtering animals and washing. Put meeting halls equidistant from each other on the streets, with distinct names for each one. Have four hospitals outside the city walls, one on each side, to take care of injured or sick people. It is suggested that one reads Saint Sir Thomas More's Utopia to better understand how the city is run.

V - Z

 * Venice: Make your city have canals of water or lava for roads. Add bridges as well. Boats will be used for transportation, but don't use boats in lava, or else they will burn up. Also, if you use lava, you obviously shouldn't use flammable materials in buildings.


 * Vertical: Build a huge tower out of any material you want. Then, use ladders or scaffoldings to travel across the city and make the buildings stick out of the tower. Make this tower very tall and wide.


 * Void: Create a superflat world with only one layer of blocks. Build a tall structure and then blow up the ground, exposing the void. Then use the tall structure to build blocks off of and make an awesome Void city! Alternate Strategy: Create a completely empty superflat world and use to add a block to build off of.

Transportation
You need a method of transportation for your city to get around. Here are some ideas:


 * If in Creative, you could make a series of TNT launchers to work as elevators to higher levels of your city (remember to make with bedrock or obsidian).


 * Boats: If your metropolis is spread across several islands, then build a boat network. Have harbors at every island and make wool pillars in the water (buoys) with signs directing people to other harbors. You can also have canals, but these might get in the way of your construction.


 * Buses: You can name a horse or pig 'Bus' and have 'bus stops' along the road. You grab a bus and ride it to the bus stop nearest your destination. Variation: Use command block teleporters, or have a train of minecarts, similar to a tram.


 * Cars Using command blocks, you can place minecarts on normal blocks and drive them like cars. Saddled pigs and horses act like cars too, and if you have a car mod, you could use that.


 * Command Hub: High above the city, place a platform with command blocks on it. These command blocks can teleport the player to a new location with the press of a button. Label all the command blocks with signs. All the locations labeled on this platform should have their own command blocks teleporting the player back to the hub. It is also a fantastic place to place a community end portal, nether portal, elytra launcher, and other contraptions.


 * Elytra: Create several elytra launchers, each with fireworks, and let people fly to wherever they want. Put the launchers in convenient places. You could also have some other transport system (like minecarts) to serve your city, but have a central airport in which you use elytra to get to other cities.


 * Ferry: If you have plugins or mods, instead of boats you could have a ferry over small/medium-sized oceans.


 * Flying: Warning, this will need either command blocks or an admin. Basically, have an "airport" where command blocks and/or an admin will give players creative (or spectator) mode so they can fly from the new airport to another. Must have very good security, or else people will start to abuse their creative mode abilities.
 * Flying Machine You can make a flying machine, if in vanilla use Slime Block Machines, but if you have mods, you can create more realistic airplanes/blimps.


 * Horse: Build a stable to keep them in. You could create separate horse lanes on your roads, may be marked with a slightly different material than your normal roadblock. At your gas stations sell saddles, horse armor, wheat, etc.

Note: Assuming RailCraft is installed, you can make separate high-speed and low-speed railways to further differentiate a class system in your metropolis.
 * Minecart: You can make a subway or overground railway to get people around. See Tutorials/Train Station for more information. Set up ticket booths and charge people, allowing them to drive the minecarts once they pay. As well, if you have a mod that adds literal trains (i.e. RailCraft or TrainCraft), you can use those instead. An interesting tactic to try out, if you want to have actual trains, is to automate the fare collection process and make people drive trains. An even more interesting way to do this is to have two minecarts be pushed by a furnace minecart on and off of powered/unpowered rails to create a great and automated system. Plus, you get to brag that you have a use for furnace minecart.

Note: There is a plugin called traincarts. it allows Minecarts to be connected and automated like real life!


 * Pigs: Pigs can be controlled using carrots on a stick, allowing you to have "cars". You could add "gas" stations selling carrots on sticks.


 * Sea Roads: Build a small road across the oceans if your city spreads across a few small islands. Half blocks are recommended here, stone and cyan terracotta are examples.


 * Ships and Planes: If you have plugins or mods such as Flan's mod, you can use commands or special items to move your ship or plane. It will be useful if you build an airport or a port.


 * Teleporting: You can now create redstone circuits which activate console commands with command blocks. Build "stations" with command blocks in them, which have the command " /tp @p " to teleport the nearest player to the command block to the specified coordinates. You could also have various chests with ender pearls inside.


 * Walking: The most common way is by walking, so build wide roads out of stone and pavements out of stone slabs or other materials (See the Roads section below for more details). Rest stops are optional, but may be useful for players wishing to log off or stop for a moment without being attacked.

A - D

 * Acropolis If you have an Ancient Greek city, find a hill, then permeate it with temples and religious complexes. You can build a ruined variation of this in a modern city, too.


 * Airport Build an airport and add a runway to "fly" planes off of. Most of the largest cities should have one. If you have mods, you can actually make the plane realistically fly. Some things to have in your airport are:


 * Baggage Claim: This is where players get their items after getting off their flight. You could have chest minecarts continuously go around a little track to imitate the conveyor belts where luggage is retrieved.


 * Security Checkpoint: Have a long line made with fences leading to a body scanner and an ice conveyor belt that players put their items on. If you want, have a contraband list of things you cannot bring through security, like TNT, firework stars, fire charges, lava buckets, swords, bows, and arrows, and use command blocks with the clear inventory command to execute.


 * Check-In: Where players can check-in their luggage and present their "boarding pass". This could be a piece of paper or a gold nugget or something else valuable, because airplane tickets are expensive in real life.


 * Food Court: Nobody wants to wait for a flight with an empty stomach. Have a large room with lots of tables and restaurants to get food from.
 * Think of a good name like "When Pigs Fly".


 * Departure/Arrival Gates: Where to wait for and board your flight. Have lots of benches and a desk. (See Tutorials/Furniture for furniture types.)


 * Runway and aircraft: You can use mods to allow the aircraft taxi and fly, but you can use command blocks, two aircrafts in both the destination airport and the departure airport and a third aircraft in the air. Make the command blocks teleport players from the first aircraft to the aircraft in the air and after a few minutes, teleport the passengers to the requested destination airport. Build different types of aircraft classes. You could have windows in a non-moving airplane and using pistons, make wool flash by as if the plane were moving. With slime blocks, you can also make an functional aircraft.


 * You can build replicas of real-life planes, or design something completely new. In a more fantastic world, consider using airships instead of planes.


 * Amphitheatre build the half-stadium like theaters just like in Greece and Rome, and use it to hold plays, speeches, and even executions. Be sure to make it out of clean-looking stone material.


 * Amusement Park Technically, this isn't one building, but multiple buildings. You can build roller coasters made of wood and stone, ticket booths and small shops around the park, and a ferris wheel. You can make the park small or large. You could even build a water park!


 * Apartments Build a tall building out of bricks and fill it up with rooms with a single bed and small chest in each. People rent the rooms for whatever you are using as currency and can store their stuff there and sleep.


 * Animal Shelter This is for pet owners (example: tame cats and dogs), that want to give their pet away. Maybe their wolf is causing to much trouble and attacking people accidentally. This is where they can take their pets to give away. Have cages and maybe a barnyard for the farm animals like horses. These animals are given shelter, food, and water until someone comes to get a new pet. You can sell the animals for prices or just give them away for free to whoever wants them. There are two options for how to personalize your shelter: you can make it a kill-free or a kill shelter. It's your decision, but if you make it a kill shelter then you should have a certain timeline posted on a sign at the front of the building telling visitors how long you keep animals before killing them. You can do this manually, have a room devoted to killing, or possibly automate it with red stone, levers, Dispensers, and tipped arrows. If it's a no-kill animal shelter then keep the animals until someone gets them. If you don't feel like killing anything, it would be advised to expand the shelter and add more cages, as the animals will pile up more if you're not killing them and regaining space.


 * Aquarium An aquarium is like a zoo for water animals. Build huge glass tanks and fill them with water, coral, water plants and, most importantly, animals, such as squids and all kinds of fish. You can even have hostile water animals, like guardians, in the aquarium, but if you have, be careful that they don't attack the visitors or other animals.


 * Aqueducts Aqueducts are bridges for conveying water across gaps such as valleys, rivers or ravines. Not only is it an aqueduct to supply your town with water, but you can also have a nautical highway.


 * Arcade Build a building and make the walls out of colorful blocks and fill it with fake games made of iron, paintings, and signs. You could even get/make a resource pack that makes the painting "screens" look like real games!


 * Archery Range A place where people can practice their archery skills. Use target blocks for normal targets, and if you want, you can have mobs riding minecarts for moving targets.


 * Area 51 A place for admins to manage private matters. Make a small building far from the city and hire guards to kill intruders on sight. Add lots of rooms for top-secret projects and make sure there are no windows at all. Fill the interior with command blocks with levers and buttons attached, and useful notes.You may want to use illagers as guards.


 * Arena A player arena and a mob arena in one! You can make it look nice-ish on the outside, but the inside should be bedrock. Have torches and glowstone, and mob spawn egg dispensers or mob spawner's for the arena. Have plenty of temporary weapons for rent in the "arena store" or whatever you want to call it. Be creative.


 * Armor & Weapons shop Use the city's currency (e.g. emeralds, nether quartz, diamonds) to buy weapons and armor.


 * Army Outpost A place where your army is held until they go to war. It may be built out of something strong to keep your army safe. You may keep the armor in it, as long as weapons and beds are inside for the army.


 * Barracks: A place where soldiers protect your outpost live.


 * Armory: A place where weapons and armor are stored. This would be a building under heavy guard, with chests filled with swords, bows, arrows, and armor, all of the various tiers. If there are mods installed that add new weapons, fill chests with them, too.


 * Guard Tower: Put guards up here with bows and arrows, swords, and sets of armor. Place these near the walls to protect the outpost.


 * Walls: Surround your outpost in a wall of strong material (like obsidian) to prevent those with malicious intents from getting in. For extra security, you could place Guard Towers nearby to prevent people from scaling the walls.


 * Auditorium A place for people to gather and watch something, like a concert, speech, etc. It should be able to seat a lot of people. Can be placed in the Town Hall.


 * Bakery Make a building with a baker (a player) who sells bread, pumpkin pies, and cakes. If there are mods that add more baked goods, have the baker sell those too. Could be attached to the cake factory. Make a pumpkin, wheat, chicken, cow, and sugar cane farm.


 * Bank People go here to store their money. Have a trusted person work there and have vaults deep underground to store their gold and diamonds (you can also use dried kelp blocks to represent banknote stacks). Only let the trusted person and the owner of the vault into it. You can use piston doors on the vaults that need a special "key" (Lever) Variation: Use /blockdata ~ ~-1 ~ {Lock:keyname} when standing on a chest. Then, give a player an item named 'keyname' or whatever you typed in the command.

More complex version: Have people have a simple account by giving access to an ATM (ender chest). People can also send a request to have a personal vault underground by writing a book with their name and requested combination and putting it into a minecart with a chest along with their items, and sending the minecart into the main facility. Then, the owner (with redstone knowledge), can build a working vault with combo lock and message the player when they have finished, so the player can access their vault. NOTE: This method will take up a lot of space, build it preferably underground (Think Gringotts from "Harry Potter"!)


 * Bar Make a store that only sells negative-effect potions, such as potions of Poison. You can make chairs, brewing stands, and note blocks or other music generators. This can be combined with the dance floor to make a night club. If you have IndustrialCraft 2 or GrowthCraft installed, you can instead actually brew drinks in the bar.


 * Batting Cages Make a building out of cobblestone, making it an ample size, such as 27 by 27 by 17. Spawn or transport a Ghast in the structure. Players can pay admission to practice deflecting the ghast fireballs back at the Ghast. When the Ghast is killed and the player leaves, spawn another Ghast for the next player.


 * Bookstore Fill a shop with bookshelves. Have a librarian villager work there and have authors write in book and quills to buy or borrow. Also, to make citizens happy, let them write their own books with book and quills.


 * Breeder Make an Industrial Farm and agricultural rooms with chickens, pigs, etc., and when necessary, kill them for meat.


 * Butcher's Shop Make a building with the front having a counter, and in the back have furnaces to cook meat. Have a butcher villager worker there and sell the meat. You could also have hunters to go hunt the meat for the butchers, again, just an idea. You could have an automatic furnace to cook food when you aren't there. You need 3 hoppers, 1 furnace, 6 (or 3) chests and 2 levers.


 * Cake Factory Build a factory that makes cakes. You could connect it to the bakery. Have a chicken, cow, sugar, and wheat farm under it, with automated egg, sugar cane, and wheat harvesting.


 * Campground  Somewhere far from your city (ideally far off from the Rural Zone), you could make a campground! A campground is a place with many sized "campsites" that customers can set up "tents" (triangular structures made out of wool) on. This is a very good alternative to a large hotel, if you want to save time. On each campsite, don't forget to create a fire pit with logs (players who stay would have to buy logs from the service or somewhere else), enough space for at least a medium-sized tent, and maybe add some trees here and there. To add detail, put trees everywhere, as if it's in a forest. Add a gravel path connecting the campsites, perhaps a shack for restrooms (completely optional), a lake or pond (if you're building by water), a playground, and if you wanted to make it very sophisticated, you could make a number of tents that visitors could have on a campsite, and you could even make it in a State or National Park, if you don't want visitors cutting down trees for wood.


 * Capture the Flag Arena Have a 41 by 20 area split in the middle with a wall using pistons. Add 2 chests with 3 stacks of 20 arrows. Also, have 3 bows. Have 2 trapped chests with your "flag". If someone is shot, they are out. Have a dispenser that shoots fireworks connecting to both trapped chests. The fireworks should be different. This lets people know who won. To make this, you'll need some redstone knowledge. You'll need 20 wool, 2 dispensers, 20 pistons, 4 trapped chests, 4 chests, and a lot of redstone. Or, instead of just shooting people, you could have to kill them to get them out. Also, since Java Edition 1.8 has banners, you can use those as flags.


 * Casino Have a big fancy building with minecart with a chest slot machines (minecart in, random items out) or pig slot machines (using random pig movements.) Make it out of gold and diamonds. In survival, make it out of lots of fancy wool and obsidian.


 * Cemetery Build a cemetery building. You could use iron bars to make a fence, and an iron door to enter. Then add graves inside. Make tombstones out of stone bricks and dig holes under them. If you have access to a world editing tool, you can place zombie or skeleton spawners under them. You can also expand the cemetery by building an underground crypt.


 * Church/Cathedral Have a big building to worship in. Add stained glass windows for an old-fashioned look. If you want this building to look like, say, it was built in the 11th century, it is suggested that you hide any redstone. You may also put a cross made out of gold in or on top of the cathedral (or both!) and build a bell tower.


 * Cinema/Theater Build a large building with a ticket counter and a hallway leading to the screen rooms. Have a food bar selling "popcorn" (pumpkin seeds) and "cola" (milk buckets or potions). Try to use carpet and/or wool for the floor. If you have the Web Displays or the ComputerCraft mod installed, it would be good for a player to start the films within a certain schedule. You can also have actors or pistons and redstone moving things about. There could be a dark cave under the seats for monster sound effects, or a note block circuit or jukebox for music. Try to have different types of screen like 'low class', 'medium class' 'high class' and (possibly) IMAX (huge proportions!).
 * City/Town Hall Have a huge building for the mayor, the mayor's assistants, and the people in charge of certain things (such as law enforcement, health and welfare, ...) A good place to put this is the very heart of your city. Be sure to make it out of diamonds or something else expensive. This will make your city look way more attractive. You could even build a huge political complex around it with a secret service headquarters, embassies for mobs or other cities or servers, and of course, parking for everyone.


 * Clothes Store Make a lot of leather armor, dye it custom colors, and put it on armor stands for people to buy/trade. You could arrange by color, arrange it in outfits, or whatever other way you come up with. You can also sell other kinds of armor. To look extra authentic, either put the armor on armor stands, or add "models" by luring a skeleton or zombie into a glass case and give it the armor. If you are in creative mode, you can put a human head on as well to make them look more like humans. (If you are using the latter, you must give them name tags to prevent them from despawning.) Make sure that the people who are in your city can't release the monsters. For added safety, you can use barriers instead of glass.


 * Cobblestone Plant Make a factory that produces cobblestone by the thousands!


 * Dance Lounge Have a multi-colored wool for a dance floor and use redstone lamps (whatever you want to do with it). You can use obsidian for walls. You'll have a blast! Have note blocks and music discs for the DJ to use.


 * Department Store/Mall Make a huge building with many floors that sell different items. Have a floor for blocks, armor, food, and mob drops, etc., for different prices. In a mall, have each store in a separate room.


 * Some stores to add to your Mall would be:
 * Building Shop: This shop sells common and exotic building materials such as stone, cobblestone, brick blocks, glass, glass panes, nether bricks, obsidian, wood, planks and bookshelves.
 * Daycare: When the younger users' parents log off, send the kids to daycare! You can build it out of something pretty and place things you may find in a daycare: beds, a chest filled with toys, a chest with food, and optionally a painting and jukebox. You can build daycares for baby animals and villagers (although it'll be hard to get villager kids to settle down). Be sure to have plenty of light!
 * DIY (Do-it-yourself) store: A place where you can buy things that are, DIY related. You could have kits to build either type of golem, materials to build your own thing in your house, and you should be allowed to order things too.
 * Drug store: A store which sells only potions with positive effects, especially potions of healing, as well as milk to cure negative effects.
 * Enchantments Shop: A place where you pay someone to enchant your tools/weapons/armor. A good idea would be to hook this up to an XP farm.
 * Exotic Shop: This shop sells items that are a little more difficult to find such like glowstone, lapis lazuli, blaze rods, ender pearls, gold nuggets, apples, golden apples, music discs and eyes of ender.
 * Food Market: A place where you can buy any kind of food.
 * Forge: Charge people to craft a tool or smelt a block.
 * Furniture Shop: A place that sells furniture like tables (pistons), chairs (stairs), chess tables, showers, and build those in your home!
 * Garden Shop: This shop will sell flowers, flower pots, saplings, bone meal, water buckets, dirt, grass blocks, sand, cactus, nether wart, all varieties of seed, melon, pumpkin, hoes, red and brown mushrooms, lily pads, vines, sugar cane and any other farming resources that exist.
 * Junk Food Shop: A junk food shop will sell cake, cookies, pie, and burgers (steak + 2 bread). Make sure no healthy food goes in!
 * Local Shop: Sells everything, but junk food (cake or cookies, maybe pumpkin pie). May also sell tools and armor, but probably nothing past iron. (This shop may also have a higher price than specialized shops.)
 * Music Shop: Sell rare music discs and jukeboxes for a high price.
 * Potions Shop: A place where you can buy all kinds of potions.
 * Redstone Outlet: A shop which sells all things having to do with redstone. Have some examples of redstone going underground like a piston lift, a piston clock or an automatic farm/cobblestone generator.
 * Restaurant: Sell water and milk for drinks and several types of foods. Customers should be able to order meals. Build blocks above the front counter with signs on them saying the food and drink customers can buy and the price. Put wooden stairs for chairs on either side of a fence post with a pressure plate on top for a table. A piston with a redstone torch under it can also be used as a table. There can be chests behind the counter to store items in. You could hire people to work at the restaurant behind the counter, or admins on creative could run it. Just in case the food runs out, there should be a room behind the counter for the kitchen with even more chests of raw food and ingredients and an infinite source of water, with many furnaces and coal to cook the food. There should also be crafting tables for cake and cookies and bread and such. Once the food is cooked, it should be transferred to the chests behind the counter. There should be no regular chests, just large chests. If you are really ambitious, you could automate everything there: use minecarts with chests to send food to the counter from an automatic farm, and have it all come to a single collection point.
 * Scrap Shop: Where players trade in beaten armor, damaged tools and blocks they have no use for, then the owner sells them to people who can't afford full grade armor.


 * Dog Pound Fill a building with wild wolves in cages and sell them to people. Give them bones until the dog is tamed. Smacking wolves is forbidden and anybody who does will be sent to jail or possibly have to be killed by the wolves it hit. And they should not get their items back!


 * Dump A place to place all your junk in, Place double chests in a small shack inside the dump where you can store your old tools and junk, And add an area to place your useless blocks in. And when it's full have workers collect the blocks and make them into something new or just throw the blocks in a lava pit. Put a few around the town for citizens to give there old, useless junk. If you have mods such as Tinkers Construct or Twilight Forest, you can also recycle junk, and then sell the products to factories or shops.


 * Dungeon Arena A dungeon that a player goes into to fight hostile mobs. You could go into the Nether and slay Nether Mobs and the Wither to find the end of the dungeon, a bunker containing a prize and a portal back to the Overworld. Inspired by "Take 'Em All On" in The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.

E - H

 * Editorial A place where people create several books on guides, tips, crafting recipes, etc.


 * Embassy Make other peoples' voices heard! Build offices that represents another server, a nearby city, or even mobs like villagers, creepers (build its walls out of obsidian, or they will blow up the rest of your city), or endermen! Also, remember to build them next to your city hall.


 * Enderman Art Show Put endermen in a room of blocks they can pick up. After a set amount of days, see how they changed it! Players can bet on certain blocks being moved. Make sure that the endermen are kept in a glass cage, though, or players might look at them and make the police come in! Make the room out of bedrock, as Endermen cannot teleport through them, and the glass only 2 blocks high as endermen cannot teleport through blocks that are shorter than them. Also remember that Endermen can despawn over time, unless they are named with a renamed enderman spawn egg.


 * Execution Zone- If somebody cheats or griefs, then you could have them put on trial and if they're found guilty, exile them, make them fight in the arena, or publicly carry out the death sentence in this place (Makes the most sense if it's a dictatorship OR medieval themed.)


 * Farm Have wheat, melons, pumpkins, and sugar cane growing. Raise and breed cows, chickens, pigs, and sheep. Sell the food and wool you get from the farm for iron and gold. Sell animals for gold.


 * Fire Station Griefing protection is first and last, but your wood constructions need a plan B. Fill a house with water buckets, lots of splash and lingering water bottles, armor enchanted to fire protection as well as potions of fire resistance, and horses ready to move out in maximum speed. If your city has a minecart network or a channel network, you can use minecarts or boats instead. As an extra measure, you could have a button in all of the houses to call the fire station, connected with redstone. In the fire station, you could have a wall of redstone torches, corresponding to the town's buildings, so when someone presses a fire button, the corresponding torch would turn off. Another way is to have a button in the fire station over the redstone torch connected to dispensers which will flood the house with water. This is not a very good idea since it will wash away all most redstone and decoration blocks, but it will save your city from burning to the ground.


 * Fountain – An aesthetic addition to any city. Hugely customizable, with many unique designs. Fountains can be used as a centerpiece, on roads, in parks, in buildings, etc.


 * Garden Make a big grassy area in the center of the town full of trees, flowers, and tall grass. Use street lights along a road to keep hostiles from spawning. If you feel creative, construct a lookout tower with a spiraling staircase up to the top, which has a view of the whole city. You could also add attractions such as caves filled with ores and charge people for a guided tour. Be creative with it, but don't go too far.


 * Gas Station A place to buy minecarts, carrot on a stick, and 'snacks'. Make a duty so players must show what they're carrying. Pay 1 emerald for 64 items or if you're very greedy, to get 32. Build 'pumps' where you can get food for your horses, pigs, etc., (for transportation). This could be further enhanced with a car mod. For extra decor, you could even build a car wash at the gas station!


 * Glass Factory A large room with small rooms with many furnaces and glass manufacturing workers, you can also make automatic glass manufacturing with chests, hoppers and furnaces.


 * Great Under-Tier: This should be built at the very bottom of the city. Add lots of factories, refineries, et cetera. This place is likely to be heavily polluted and can have many workers. Add large "disposal pipes" that eject waste or slag (unwanted trash like smelted stone) either out of the city or into lava pools and fires or incinerators. Build large disposal furnaces that you can burn waste (or execute players) in.


 * Gym This is where you could work out. Have a practice fighting area and a parkour challenge. You could connect it to the swimming pool and other areas.


 * Hair Salon Make a place with chests and fill them with hair salon tools such as swords or shears for scissors, water bottles as hair gel, etc. Use wool to make "chairs" and make people who work there wear hairstylist suits. Add glass as mirrors so people can see how they look, and black dyed armor (or any color) as the capes that keep your clothes from getting "hairy".


 * Hall of Crafting Create a large building with displays of crafting recipes. After the introduction of the recipe book, this building serves very little practical purpose.


 * Harbor/Port Can only be built if your town is near the ocean or a river. It will be useful if your town is spread across several islands. Craft boats and build giant ships. Charge money to rent a canoe or rowboat and charge even more if it breaks. You could also have a fishing area with shops selling fish and fishing rods.


 * Hardware Store Build a big building and fill it up with hardware materials such as wooden planks (in all colors), cobblestone, stone, etc., make the shelves high and use ladders to get to them easily. Have many checkouts with people manning them.


 * Highway System Make a highway system in your city! Make exits and entrances in the highway. If your city is a big one, you can make several highway roads around your city and you can have them connected to each other. These can also be used to connect two or more cities. A beltway would be useful for navigating around the city's outskirts. You can even dig a long tunnel under the center of the city.


 * Hospital A place to care for injured players. Make a big house with a red cross on it, and fill it with beds, healing potions, surgery rooms, and so on. Hire "doctors" and get them to wear nurse and surgeon skins. You can even sleep in one of the beds there, and you will wake up peacefully after a bad episode. This will likely be the most visited building in your city and therefore you may want to hire security to take care of griefers and troublemakers.


 * Hotel Where players can sleep, among other things. Make it as luxurious as possible - no one wants to sleep in a grimy motel, unless it's very cheap.


 * Food Bar: Where hungry players can get something to eat. Remember to have both junk food and healthy food. If you want you can have a "Food of the Day" or "Food of the Week", and maybe specials for the different times.


 * Rooms: Obviously, the hotel rooms! Put in "dressers" (see Tutorials/Furniture for how to do that), chests for guests to put their luggage, a TV, some couches, perhaps a bathroom, and, never forget, the beds. Add an iron door to the entrance and put a cobblestone wall around it with a stone button, so players can access a room with an authority. However, if you want more privacy in the rooms, consider using dark oak, spruce or birch doors instead, as they don't have windows in them. Don't forget to put an obvious button, lever or pressure plate on the inside of the room, or players won't be able to get out without an authority. You can also add "pro lighting" by adding redstone lamps instead of torches or jack o'lanterns.


 * Swimming Pool and Spa: Where players of all ages can go to have a good time. For the pool, remember to have a shallow end (players can touch the ground without going underwater), a drop-off (where the water gets deeper), and a deep end (not for the faint of heart or the poor swimmers). For a hot tub, remember to have a seat along the edge and water with no current. This is where players can go to relax. For a more realistic hot tub, place soul sand at the bottom of the pool, so it creates bubble columns in the water.


 * Minecart with Chest: Some players are willing to carry their luggage all the way to their rooms, but others, well, others don't want to haul their luggage around. Place a few minecarts with chests between the 2 entrances in the hotel. Have an authority send the minecart that leads to your room out. After all, only they know which minecart leads to your room.


 * Stairs: Make stairs leading to the floors. You can do simple stairs, or you can do fancy spiral staircases. Make sure to add railings - the last thing you want is for your first customer to be your last customer because of falling to their death at the hotel!


 * Elevators: If you're an elderly user or do not wish to use the stairs, you can just hop onto an elevator. It can be a series of pistons, for example, so the only walking you'll have to do is from one piston to the next.

I - M

 * Ice Rink This is best built using creative mode, unless you are willing to spend lots of experience trying to get Silk Touch on a pickaxe. Place packed ice or blue ice on the ground inside of a building and skate around on it. Using normal ice is not recommended as it melts easily. Have contests to see who can skate the fastest or spin the longest.


 * Incinerator Build a chamber open in the front and add lava at the top, or light netherrack at the bottom, then, allow citizens to throw their unwanted items into it so they can be incinerated. Best placed on highly polluted areas like dumps and manufacturing districts. For some extra realism, you could add a chimney with a campfire near the top so that smoke comes out.


 * Inn This is best to be built using creative mode. It needs an elevator, rooms, bathrooms, a lobby, even some miscellaneous rooms. Make sure that you have some chests, furnaces, a fridge, a crafting table, and maybe even other items. Use this for a passerby who stays for the night.


 * Jail When people break the rules, send them to jail. Build lots of cells inside of a big building and lock people inside. Make sure an admin changes them to adventure mode so they can't mine their way out. Using bedrock or obsidian for the walls is also a good way to prevent people from escaping. Another way is to put lava inside the walls, so if a prisoner attempts to dig out, the lava will flow on them, killing them. If you don't want a jail, you can fine people, instead if you are using money, or execute them.


 * Library: A place with many bookshelves, lecterns with books written about crafting, or the history of the city, comic books, novels or maybe even books about legends of Herobrine. Have librarian villagers running the place. You can also have a public enchantment table.


 * Lighthouse Build a tall tower with a light source on the top to serve as a navigational aid for players. Most modern lighthouses are automated and unmanned, and not likely to have much interior space, but older lighthouses typically have enough space inside to accommodate the lighthouse keepers.


 * Lodestone A place where players can adjust their compasses with a lodestone so they can easily find their way back to the city if they leave. The lodestone can be free to use, or you can have a usage fee. If you are building your city in Nether or End, this building is even more important, because compasses can't work without lodestones in those dimensions. In Nether or End, it might be a good idea to place a lodestone near the return portal.


 * Maze Mostly for people who get bored. This can be used for prizes. It should be made out of mostly materials that are hard to break, like obsidian.


 * Memorial What better way to express yourself than build a giant statue/building to your favorite out of Minecraft subjects. How do you show your favorite Pokémon? Make a larger than life version of Pikachu! Or how about a huge statue of your skin? Just double-check where you put the entrances of your building.


 * Mine More of a service than a building. Build ladders down to layer 12 and let people have easy access to ores. They can extend it and you can block off some caves and ravines. Destroy spawners in dungeons and operate a first come, firstserved policy. You can also use a deep, natural cave for a mine, if you find a good one. Remember, you cannot make any mines if you play on superflat, unless you customize it in certain ways. A good way to mine is to branch-mine. It's efficient, safe and useful. It is recommended in extreme hills because of the emeralds available. It might be a good idea to build this near a surface smelter or refinery.
 * How to start a branch mine:
 * 1. Dig a 3×3 staircase (Not going straight down).
 * 2. Figure out what level you want to miners to dig at.
 * 3. Dig a 3×3 tunnel connected to the end of your staircase, it can be off any side(s).
 * 4. Dig 1×2 tunnels in your 3×3 tunnel for your miners to use (Optional: Pre-mine some tunnels).
 * 5. Continue your 3×3 tunnel for as long as you wish and add as many 1×2 tunnels as you wish.


 * Museum Make a huge art museum to show every painting in the game. You can also build pixel art and statues with blocks and put them to your museum. You can also make a historical museum showing the history of your city, a museum to show every block in the game, or reconstruct fossils and Nether fossils with bone blocks.

N - R

 * Nether Colony. Build a small village in the Nether to expand your city beyond the realm of the Overworld. Add houses of nether bricks and some quartz. Add a large wall with command blocks to give players super-powered bows enchanted with Power, Punch, and Unbreaking. The people who own the bows are the city defenders, who defend the city from ghasts, and less importantly, magma cubes and zombified piglins. No one wants to be greeted with an explosive fireball when they exit their house!


 * Observatory Make a small-sized building (maybe 5×5×5) with a ladder in the middle and fences on the roof to stop people from getting hurt by falling. Use to see the stars and the moon and the sun. Remind players to switch to far render distance there!


 * Palace A place for the server creator to consolidate their power and live. Not usually used by the humble. May include a personal tower to overlook the city.


 * Parkour Arena Make a building of your choice, and start creating parkour stages. Be sure to include a way for players to get back to a starting point if they fail a jump.


 * Parliament If you choose to make your world a democracy, build a Parliament, Congress or National Assembly where player representatives can meet and discuss issues and vote on national issues. Make it unicameral or bicameral, for example, maybe a Chamber of Representatives that is popularly elected on the server and a Chamber of Elders that is elected by player interest groups (For example, "Miners" elect a representative, "Doctors" elect one, "Farmers" elect their own, as well).


 * Pet Shop Here, you can sell wolves, parrots and stray cats. They are sold untamed, and then the buyer can tame them if they want to. You can also fill chests with dog food (rotten flesh and bones), bird food (all kinds of seeds) and cat food (raw fish). If you want, you can even sell spawn eggs (Watch out with the hostiles) and golems (iron and snow). Remember to keep the pets in cages, and optionally have a home delivery service. Be careful, as the wild ocelots will despawn.


 * Pig Racing Stadium Have a rectangle-shaped arena and have racers who have carrots on sticks. See who can get to the finish first! See the race referee section in the command block tutorial, multiplayer applications section. Players can bet on what pig they think will win and prizes will be given to winning riders and their pigs (some form of money and wheat, respectively).


 * Pig Parking Lot Build parking lots in front of your stores!


 * Police Station Make a building for admins and iron golems to work in. When a griefer or monster appears in town, send the admin or iron golem to bring them to jail.


 * Portal Stations Place stations all around your city (depending on the size) so that your residents could easily travel to the End and the Nether. You could decorate the station with end stone and/or netherrack for a cooler touch. Note that you can't create an end portal in survival mode without mods or cheats.


 * Post Office Make a large building with a main desk and stores off to the side that sells paper, ink sacs, and feathers. Hire people to be mail carriers that carry mail to other users. Users can (for a fee) write letters and send items to other users. You can also make chests on fence posts to be mailboxes.


 * Power Plant - A large factory-like building that can be a variety of types, used to create energy, possibly in the form of a redstone signal. You can also have "power lines" made of tripwire running from the plant.
 * Nuclear - Use gray blocks to simulate uranium or use mods to add actual uranium. Add large exhaust towers with mass smoke generators inside. Remember to have it maintained and block all griefers. You can use command blocks to inflict the Wither status effect to anyone who comes too close to the reactors, to simulate the effects of radiation.
 * Hydro - Build a dam near a large reservoir.
 * Fire - Use large fires and use wood to fuel them. Furnaces work, too.
 * Mob - Put captured mobs in glass cages to use as a kind of fuel by either suffocating, physically killing them, or dropping gravel or anvils from above. Add fires where the drops will go so that they are a kind of fuel.
 * Solar - Use a lot of daylight sensors to create power.
 * Microwave- Same as solar, but place the daylight sensors on a space station that is beamed down with beacons.
 * Hydrobeams- Put a lot of guardians in a large glass tank and spawn squid with an admin using spawn eggs or a command block. Use the beams they create to kill the squid to power your city.
 * Wind- Build a lot of wind turbines in a relatively open area.


 * Psychic This house may be built with netherrack or any dark blocks. Torches will give it an old feeling, and also hire someone to be psychic, and can use command blocks, chat, books or any other way you like. Place some enchantment tables, if you want. Adding cobwebs is another idea.


 * Pyrotechnics This shop is where you buy gunpowder, fire charges, firework stars, fireworks, TNT, flint and steel, charcoal, etc. Hire pyrotechnicians to make these items and have them put on a fireworks show every 4th of July or a holiday. Utilizing a fireworks license system will work, too.


 * Radar Center Build Have a lot of giant satellite dishes and control centers. Make sure to put a map on it to detect vehicles, planes, etc.


 * Refinery / Smeltery Build a building and add a lava farm and a lot of furnaces. Ores brought from the mines can be smelted and brought to silos or factories for storage or use.


 * Repair Shop Make a store that repairs items for players, for a fee. Have lots of anvils in it.


 * Restaurant Sell water and milk for drinks and all kinds of foods. You should be able to order meals. Build blocks above the front counter with signs on them saying the food and drink you can buy and the price. Put wooden stairs for chairs on either side of a fence post with a pressure plate on top (for a table). A piston with a redstone torch under it is another table. There can be chests behind the counter, you can hire people to work at the restaurant behind the counter, or admins on creative could run it. Make sure to fill the chest with food and buckets of water or milk. Just in case the food runs out, there should be a room behind the counter for the kitchen with even more chests of raw food and ingredients and an infinite source of water, with a bunch of furnaces and coal to cook the food, and some crafting tables for cake and cookies and bread and such, then when food is cooked it is transferred to the chests behind the counter, there should be no regular chests, just large chests. Is you are really ambitious, you could automate everything there. Use minecarts with chests to send food to the counter, and automatic farm where it all comes to a single collection point. For cities inhabitated by zombies, put a bunch of redstone cages that can drop villagers so zombies can eat them.

S - U

 * School Have a school to teach players about building, mining, crafting, brewing, enchanting, fighting, and redstone. Make a building (size depends on the kind of school — for instance, an elementary school would be small (20-50 blocks), while a college would be much, much bigger (150 to 300 blocks) and fill it with desks, chests with textbooks in them, a teacher's desk with an apple, feather, or something else school-related in an item frame. You can have all kinds of rooms at school. For example:


 * Classrooms: Where your students come to learn. You can teach Science, Social Studies, Arts and Crafts, Magic, etc. Put desks, chairs, a teacher's desk, chests with textbooks (written books), and a "blackboard" (black wool or black terracotta, or use the chalkboard if you're in Education Edition). Perhaps the teacher could have a stock of signs and could use them to 'write' on the board, by putting the signs on it and typing the information.


 * Detention center: If students are naughty at school, or break the rules, they go to detention! Detention can be anything, from sitting there thinking about what you've done to extra homework. If the students are exceedingly naughty, they could get suspended or even expelled! This is not a room you want to go to.


 * Cafeteria: After many long school hours, this is where the kids can go to grab some grub. You may have a menu. Maybe the kids need to spend "lunch money" for lunch, food may be free, or the students may bring their own lunches. Make sure no poisonous food gets in.


 * Nurse's office: If your students are ill (has a negative effect, perhaps an incident during Magic class), send them here! The nurse may be able to detect the problem and give them "medicine". She may also prescribe a prescription (like "Don't eat spider eyes"). Be sure to add lots of milk, healing potions, regeneration potions, and cookies for when the kids feel better!


 * Halls: Finally, the halls. It may be a simple hallway, or it might be a big, bustling corridor. Don't forget lockers! An example of a locker is iron blocks in the shape of a rectangle with an iron door and chests inside to lighten your load.


 * Science Lab Build a place to test potions and create new inventions. Don't forget those safety goggles!


 * Senate Building A place for all territory leaders to convene to make changes to their world and let their voices be heard. Allows elections, mutual improvements, and notifications in the server that normally an embassy cannot install, among other things. Be sure to make it stand out from the rest of the settlement.


 * Sewers No one likes to drink their own filth, so make sewers underground that link all the houses and buildings. You can have the sewers flow into a sewage treatment plant, unless you are building a medieval city, so the filthy water can be cleaned. Use mossy cobblestone or mossy stone bricks as walls and add a water stream. Don't forget to light it, as otherwise, the sewers will become a dungeon. You could also use the sewers as a secret way of transportation and hide entrances in important buildings.


 * Silo Build a large warehouse-like building and add ladders and chests for you to store the output from factories and it can double as a store of waste to be taken to incinerators or a contraband destruction facility.
 * Ski Hill Build paths down mountains and hills. Different paths can appear to have different difficulties based off of the hill incline, bumps, and turns. Spruce trees, chairlifts, ramps, cabins, and snowmen would all make great decorations for the trail.


 * Skyscraper Build an incredibly tall building out of stone or stone-related blocks (or some similar blocks) and have lots of windows. You can add a piston elevator that allows players to choose which floor to visit.
 * Super-tall Skyscrapers If you are building your city in superflat, you can build extremely tall skyscrapers. If each of the floors in the building is 4 blocks high (including the floor), you could build up to 64 floors. If each floor in the building is 3 blocks high (including the floor), you could have up to 85 floors. If you have a mod that allows it, your skyscraper could go above layer 256 and make it even taller. Make a floor plan, such as:
 * Ground Floor: Lobby
 * Floors 1 through 5: Mall/Shopping Center
 * Floors 6 through 20: Offices
 * Floors 21 through 40: Apartments
 * Floors 41 through 61: Hotels
 * Floor 62: Observatory


 * You can add mechanical floors at intervals which includes something like a control room that controls the redstone signal in the building.
 * Slaughterhouse Build a medium-sized building where unwanted animals are lined up to drown or burn (not with lava though) or whatever suits you. Collect their drops and give them to meat and/or wool shops. Note: Do not build this if your city is a Peaceful Place.


 * Space Station You could build a place either on the ground or just under the build limit, or in the End, or if you have a mod such as Galacticraft, make it so you can see the sun and moon glitch with that mod. You could use a TNT cannon facing upwards to propel you to infinity and beyond! Remember to have a ground control and all the other stuff. You could build a fake moon out of end stone and add slimes as aliens. Make it very futuristic and have lots of redstone. You could build two: one in space and one on the ground. You need to hire astronauts. Build a 'rocket' to explore the universe.


 * Specially Themed Inn Similar to a regular inn, but themed on a certain city, server, block, or even mob! Build small replicas of famous landmarks so your hotel will look like any famous city you choose. Use different materials for different landmarks, like use diamond blocks to make a Statue of Liberty, if your hotel is themed on New York. If your inn is themed on a certain block, make your inn completely out of that block (except for doors, windows, beds, etc.)!


 * Stadium Have a big stadium where players can compete in sports such as spleef and paintball. Add lots of seating for people can sit and watch.
 * For extra fun, install some mods that add variants of sports (i.e. paintball, as mentioned above).


 * Surveillance Room/Security Office Get somebody to explore the whole city with a large map. Then, put the map in an item frame, and you will be able to see where other players are! Tip: Hide this room.


 * Suspension Bridge Build a large suspension bridge across the river. Build towers out of iron blocks and use wool to make main cables and use fences as vertical cables. You can use most expensive blocks like diamond blocks, gold blocks and emerald blocks.


 * Tattoo Shop A place where you can change your skin. (Note: Only possible in console edition.)


 * Temple Though it may seem similar to a church, it isn't the same thing. You can make a humongous temple, or a little tiny shrine the size of a sandstone well. You can have an area for training in magic (if appropriate), a way to sacrifice, a table, lava, bottomless pit, etc. Also, make sure the temple makes sense; for instance, put a god of shadows underground and a god of time and space with end stone, portals and other mysterious things. Gather players to be priests or spawn priest villagers and give them cows and pigs to sacrifice. Or if you're slightly more brutal, and if you have captured players/criminals, you could sacrifice them to the gods. You can also design the temple after a real-life religious building, such as a mosque.


 * Town Hall This is probably the first building players usually make when building a Metropolis. Use stone bricks or quartz for pillars. Inside, add bookshelves, a stage and a few seats, and on the top floor, make the mayor's room.


 * TP Hub: Use Command Blocks with the /tp [coordinates] command to make a TP Hub for fast travel. A cheap alternative to making a massive minecart railway system.


 * Train Station (Life Size) If you want to build a train station with the trains about the size of real-world ones and not minecarts, this will help. Make sure the trains are big enough so players can walk around in them but not so big it doesn't seem right (train carriages 5-6 blocks wide is probably the best option). For a small station, you can just build platforms alongside the tracks (make sure they're far enough away so the train doesn't appear to scrape it), sheltered benches, a vending machine, a wheelchair ramp, a small single-level parking lot, and an automatic ticket machine. If you want, the tracks the platforms are next to can be sidings so trains not stopping at the station can pass by. For large stations, feel free to take inspiration from large stations in the real world (eg; Chicago Union Station or New York Grand Central Station). Be sure to add lots of tracks and platforms (maybe with a large dome covering them all), fast-food restaurants, small stores, escalators, elevators, a ticket counter, bathrooms, a hub outside on the road for buses/trams and taxis, and a large, maybe stacked, parking lot.


 * Tropical Island A perfect vacation spot which only needs a boat dock or bridge to the mainland. Decorations can add to the feeling of vacationing with tropical trees and beaches filled with tourist items.


 * TV Studio Pointless, but it gives people something to do such as filming soap operas or winning gold and diamond on a game show. Hire directors, producers, actors and actresses, build TV show sets, have pretend ratings etc. This could provide a lot of fun for players on a server.


 * Upgrade Shop A place where people can upgrade their tools or armor for a price that depends on what level of armor you're upgrading from.

W - Z

 * Walls An important part of a city's defenses, keeping both hostile mobs and attacking players out of the city. Walls should be tall and made out of sturdy materials like stone. Walls should have gates which can be closed if the city is attacked. For more tips for constructing walls, see Tutorials/Defense.


 * Water Tower A tall building with a tank filled with drinkable water on the top. As water towers are usually very tall, it may also have an observation deck at the top.


 * Water Treatment Plant Make all of your city's waste and sewers run into it.


 * Wood Factory A place with a room full of trees, and above a glass ceiling to grow, also plenty of axes and bone meal. You can be creative and make redstone mechanisms. (If you have the Forestry mod installed, you can set up multi-farms as another option.)


 * Zelda Dungeon Similar to Dungeon Arena, except more puzzle based with fewer actual monsters. Works best with the Zelda city theme.


 * Zoo Try to get one of each mob in a chamber where players can look at them. You can make mini-biomes resembling a mob's home. Be careful with the hostile mobs as they might despawn or escape and harm players. Also, remember that spiders can climb walls. Optionally, you can only put passive mobs on display, or put name tags on the hostile mobs.


 * Zombie villager monument If you want to pay respects to all the villagers that got turned you can build this

Government
Note: If you don't want to have a jail, you can fine citizens who break rules (Only if you are using money). If you are not using money, you can use a server ban.

Government Buildings

 * City/Town Hall Have a huge building for the mayor, the mayor's assistants, and the people in charge of certain things (such as law enforcement, health and welfare, city expansions, etc.) You could even build a huge political complex around it with a secret service headquarters, embassies for mobs or other cities or servers, and of course, parking for everyone.


 * Embassies Make other people's/mobs' voices/sounds heard! Think that pigs have a bad deal being ridden all over the place? Set up an embassy of pigs with other pig lovers to convince the government to stop the abuse. You could also create embassies for servers or mods.


 * Parliament If you choose to make your world a democracy, build a Parliament, Congress or National Assembly where player representatives can meet and discuss issues and vote on national issues. Make it unicameral or bicameral. For example, maybe a Chamber of Representatives that is popularly elected on the server and a Chamber of Elders that is elected by player interest groups (For example, "Miners" elect a representative, "Doctors" elect one, "Farmers" elect their own, as well.)


 * House of Representatives / National Embassy This is a building that lets different faction leaders and operators discuss and resolve server issues. Have government embassies in each faction base. This is perfect if you have multiple cities as there can be a capital and every city can express their concerns and request aid.


 * Treasury/National Bank Holds valuable items or currency for the government. This could be similar to Fort Knox. These could also be the warehouses used in the communism system.


 * Palace Here lives the leader, such as the king or president, or server creator. If you want, you can take inspiration from real-world palaces.

Government Systems
Public authorities include:

TimJanism (TimJan's ideal city):


 * Material-based economy, gold ingots are recommended as they don't have many uses like diamonds have. This will make no one able to create more by just printing it and thereby make money safer and that will let investors and companies thrive.


 * A free market controlled by no single person or entity. This will make the market adjust for inflation and the prices will constantly be decreasing (relatively) since the cheapest alternative is the only one that will survive (as in earning any money). This will also let everyone get richer as for example better housing will be available to even those with limited economic options since the products with the highest quality and lowest price is those who will survive and be bought.


 * There is a president that makes day-to-day decisions but when the decision involves lots of money the public votes, every vote is treated equally.


 * There are public mines and farms that may be used, but you will have to pay a small bit to the government, this money will be used only for public interests, such as roads.


 * There is public military, police and justice institutes and also organizes infrastructure and town planning. All law changes is voted on by the people. Other than that there is no government.


 * Republic: A democratic style of government where presidential elections are made.


 * Power of rights, which are as a judiciary. They indicate the arrest warrants and control griefing and attack when just spawn.
 * Power of choices: Responsible for making choices for President.
 * Bank branch: This is a bank that manages the city's economy.

There is one King, that king makes all the decisions. He has to abide by a document much like the real-life Magna Carta. If the king does not follow the rules, one of the nobles takes his place.
 * The Magna Carta:
 * A system much like the government practiced by the English in the late medieval period.


 * The Panzerwar A cross between crime city and dictatorship. The army will usually go running around killing possible criminals. Plus, it's likely that there will be a lot of riots, murders and executions. It is likely that there will be rebellions and the regime will quickly change all the time as the current dictator is overthrown and expect there to be a fair few wars as the ruler makes enemies. The chance of civil war is likely.


 * Plutocracy: Special privileges to the rich while the poor don't get good treatment
 * If you are the leader, award the richest server members with more riches.
 * If someone has low amounts of money, force them into work.
 * Everything is expensive.
 * If a rich player becomes poor, they join the many other poor in the outskirts of the city where they are then forced into work.
 * Hold banquets every day.
 * Anyone who revolts will be heard by spies and killed.


 * Semi-Republic: Same as Republic, but the president doesn't change, but a vice-president can change and take the president spot, if they leave the server or are on vacation, or if the president dies.


 * Dictatorship/Oligarchy: There is one player (the owner for example) or a small group that controls everything. Some things dictators do are:
 * Has all power to themself and takes away the freedom of the public.
 * Sends people that doubt them into prison. If legal in your city, force them to work in the mines! (Yes, it is rather harsh.)
 * Get rid of any opposition (imprison other political parties for example).
 * Rebellions start frequently in this system.


 * Kingdom: One king or queen (the owner for example) who rules everything
 * Has an army under their control
 * Lives in an enormous palace
 * Has a private chef, chauffeur, etc.
 * Is wealthy
 * Is the commander of the army


 * Communist:
 * People work not for themselves, but for the community.
 * Wealth is collected by the government from the citizens and is spread evenly among the population (For example, there are 16 citizens who, in total, mined 64 blocks of cobblestone. The government gives each citizen four blocks.)
 * The fruits of work should be kept in a national treasury and shall be distributed among the citizens when the need arises (From each according to their abilities to each according to their needs).
 * If you want something, just say it and the admins will give it to you from the treasury (if possible).
 * Workers are very respected
 * Not allowed to get all the good stuff yourself, share it.
 * If you didn't get enough stuff yet, work hard to get the needed stuff.
 * People must not be selfish and must work toward the greater good of the metropolis.
 * Works best in a world rich in resources to facilitate the even spread of commodities to the masses.
 * Many different types of Communism to choose from: Leninism, Marxism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Anarcho-Communism, etc.


 * Tribal Rule
 * A group of respected players vote on decisions.
 * Works best with tiny towns.
 * Can be cruel or fair.
 * Lots of feasts & holidays.
 * Community shares one religion.


 * Democracy
 * No government.
 * People vote on what is best.
 * The people make the choices.
 * The whole of the population decides on things.
 * Warning: This can cause wars over what should be done!


 * Winner Takes All
 * Whoever assassinates the king is the king.
 * Causes complete anarchy.
 * Leads to totally different governing styles over short periods of time.
 * Lots of people will be trying to hire assassins or even kill the king themselves, so be careful if you are the ruler!


 * Netherworld Style
 * A similar government system to Winner Takes All.
 * More or less the same concept, except that it's not a case of whoever kills the last king, it's the case of who's the strongest.
 * For instance, the person with the most diamond equipment could be considered the strongest, but this can also be extended to control of territory, influence over the population, etc.
 * Besides the constantly changing leader, the government should follow a system listed here (besides Winner Takes All of course).


 * Total Anarchy
 * There will be no government.
 * People will do whatever they want.
 * There will be much crime — griefing, trapping, murder, etc.
 * The city will have no organized roads — people will build wherever they want!


 * Easy System
 * One of the best government systems.
 * There is only one higher power, a mayor, king or emperor or anything else that is similar.
 * Everyone must trade for stuff or get it themselves.
 * Jails are a must-have here because an admin may not be on if something happens so the police will have to do some work there. Bans only if they do things like griefing, hacking etc.
 * The mayor, king or emperor has only a few higher powers over the town, such as giving a yes/no to house building
 * No one cares if you have many diamonds or none, you are respected for who you are, not how wealthy you are.
 * People build their own houses rather than having diamond fewer people build them for them so that cobblestone and/or planks they've obtained have an actual purpose.


 * High Life
 * The wealthy enjoy a life of luxury and the poor...not so much.
 * People with more than a certain amount of money (like d≥5 diamonds, for example) live in a palace, and do not work.
 * The poor are slaves and are forced to work in mines or other dirty jobs, and sent to jail, if they show dislike of the system.
 * Warning: Jails may overflow under this system, given a lot of people will hate this system.
 * Warning: Frequent rebellions will take place; make sure you have a loyal, committed, and powerful army.


 * Clan Battle
 * Have groups together under a clan leader, ideally with same color skins or types.
 * Wage war with the other clans on sight!
 * The clan leader may be dethroned by a stronger one, and battles will be held to see who is the strongest.


 * End of Minecraft:
 * It is the same as anarchy, but with a few tweaks.
 * Griefing is not allowed.
 * Keep all hostile mobs away from the city.
 * Recommended for post-apocalyptic cities.
 * Every player for themself unless a major event (for example, mob raids or war).


 * Crime City
 * Strictly enforced rules by police and admins.
 * Anyone caught committing a crime will be sent to one half of the city, while everyone else lives on the other side of the city. Separated by a wall.
 * Poorer people have to live close to the wall, while higher class people get to live in the nicer part of the city away from the wall.
 * Note: If you felt that you put too much work into your city to have riots, crime, and griefing on one half of it, this style of government is not ideal.


 * Stuff City
 * The ruler is a group of three people that can build with whatever they want.
 * Everyone else in the city can only build with one material, depending on where they live.
 * This is only good if it is in creative because of the limits of some materials. Some non-creative materials could be dirt, cobblestone, and all kinds of wood.


 * Feudal System
 * There is a single ruler, they rule everything.
 * There are 9 to any number of lords that rule smaller sections.
 * Each of the lord areas is divided into nine sections, each of which is ruled by a knight who rules over one or two villages. Everyone that rules a smaller section is under the rule of the people that rule over the larger sections.


 * Constitutional Technocracy
 * Note: like communism, this requires a high level of initial resource investment.
 * The map is divided into public, private, and free zones.
 * In free zones, the only rule is "No explosions." Blocks in the free zone cannot be broken by TNT, creepers, etc.
 * Private zones are regions that only designated users are allowed to edit, place and break blocks, use TNT, etc.
 * Public spaces are maintained by dedicated admins and special server rules.
 * Public spaces contain resource-production facilities like cobble generators, farms, etc., that are free for anyone to work at. These facilities are surrounded by walls made unbreakable by the server rules.
 * Access into a public facility is free; but access also binds the user and takes away most of the user's privileges, such as the right to place blocks. (Only the privileges needed to use the facility remain available to the user.)
 * In order to have most of their privileges restored and leave the facility, the user must do something to repay whatever cost they incurred while using the facilities. (For example, if a person harvests 45 carrots by breaking 20 carrot plants at a public carrot farm, they must "pay" 20 carrots back to the facility by planting carrots in farmland somewhere within the farm. If they cut a tree, they have to plant a new one. They keep only their profit. Until they pay, users will be prevented by server rules from performing basic tasks like placing blocks, opening gates, etc.)
 * Even if a person manages to escape a facility, they will not be able to do much of anything; this will discourage people from attempting to cheat the system.
 * Facilities will be compartmentalized by chunks and only one user at a time will be allowed to use a given facility.
 * The reason for this is that if a user tries to grief by bailing (for example, if they harvest all the carrots and then disconnect from the server without either leaving or replanting the field), then the chunk will be automatically restored from backup and all the user's privileges of interaction will be automatically revoked. When the user reconnects, they will be asked to speak with an admin. If it is determined that they acted in good faith (for example, if the disconnect was unintentional), then they will be required to turn in all harvested supplies and try again.
 * Resisting arrest after being detained on suspicion of griefing and/or cheating will result in account termination.
 * Ultimately, the admins are expected to rule themselves to uphold the constitution and the server. All admins have the power to veto a potential new admin. It's a technocracy mostly because the server rules do all the real work of governing.


 * My Way
 * Presidential elections are made, this means that everyone that is allowed to vote has to vote on the day.
 * Bans are only for awful things such as griefing.
 * The president must give written permission to the person if they want to build something.
 * There is only one ruler.
 * There is no admin or mod ranks, just owner, president and citizen (the owner can double as the president, but this tends to make players unhappy).
 * The president decides whether or not taxes are paid and how much the taxes cost.
 * Wars can last anywhere from a single Minecraft day to 3 real-life years if you really wanted!
 * A minimum amount of mods and/or plugins.

—————Special government—————
 * Merrifort Style
 * Government is a presidential federal republic.
 * There are two leaders: leader (president) and co-leader (vice-president).
 * Territory is divided into several provinces controlled by municipality named after the location.
 * Every big city gets territory 100 km radius.
 * State government is ruled by leader and co-leader helps them. Municipality government is controlled by a senior member of the local government.
 * If he gets sick, dies, leaves the server, cheats while ruling or is on vacation, politician selected by president and parliament takes over his post until next election where a new one will be chosen.
 * There are two main state government buildings called House of Ministers and Parliament. House of Ministers is led by Prime Minister and Parliament is led by Senior and Junior politicians.
 * If you have more ideas for this system, write them above this line.

————————————————————————-
 * Anarcho-capitalism
 * There is no government; rather, corporations make all decisions, and enforce them with privately funded police forces.
 * Taxes are not necessary as all money will already be going to the government.
 * Any businesses or trades between players not authorized by the corporation is considered the black market.
 * It is recommended to put a highly secured wall around the city to prevent people from leaving the city to trade in order to avoid getting arrested.
 * The corporation is able to make prices as low or high as they want since they have an absolute monopoly.
 * Warning: Prices that are too high may cause riots unless you pay people lots of money as well.


 * Socialism
 * All industry is owned collectively; that could mean by the government, or it could mean by groups of players, but nobody works for anyone else.
 * The profits are split equally between workers.
 * There are no classes since nobody is anyone's boss in a company.
 * The government does not tax the citizens, rather it takes a small percentage of the profits.
 * All land is owned collectively, either by the government or by equal groups of players.
 * Leaders in the government or in cooperatives should decide where to build new structures (for example, houses, farms, banks).
 * Leaders can be chosen in any way you want (e.g. parliament, republic, dictatorship, Politburo, anarchy); socialism is merely an economic system.
 * Many confuse socialism with fascism; this is not the case (see below).


 * TPK-Style Government
 * The server owner is the leader.
 * You have the rights of all things except the crime of any kind.
 * Trading is rewarded with money, if used.
 * The army and/or bodyguards are highly respected positions.


 * Constitutional Monarchy
 * A mixture of a republic and a kingdom.
 * There is a king or queen, but their position is largely ceremonial and their powers are limited by law, whether that be to a smaller or larger degree.
 * There is a parliament, congress or assembly that is democratically elected and they debate and vote on issues.
 * Depending on what you want, the monarch may be little more than a figure he'd with the assembly holding all the power, the assembly may have little power and the monarch be most important, or the two could have separate but relatively equal authority and they have to work together for the good of the people or city.


 * Safe Clans
 * Based on the game Clash Of Clans.
 * No griefing.
 * No clanmate against clanmate wars.
 * There are 4 ranks: member (first), elder (second), co-Leader (third), leader (last).


 * SPQR Style
 * There is a group of players (the senate) that make the decisions.
 * The Senate Chooses two players as their leaders (The Consuls) they only serve their position for a fixed term.
 * If the city is in a crisis The Senate and The Consuls can choose a dictator, he will only serve until the crisis is resolved, he has absolute power.
 * Deny the public services to anyone not having a citizenship.
 * Only the Citizens can occupy any high position while the non-citizens can only be workers.


 * Syndicalism*
 * A more workable way of anarchy, as practiced in Spain during WWII.
 * No central government, no banks, no money (players will have to find a way to trade!).
 * The economy is run by a council consisting of players representing every part of the economy (potions, farming, cobblestone, etc.); these council members are democratically chosen and represent their industry's workers, but have no more power than the average member of the community.
 * No one "owns" any land, not even the council members. Since there is no government, there's no police force to protect private property.
 * Players are free to go anywhere they want, write anything they want, and say anything they want. Disable the chat censor and allow swearing (make the server 18+!), but have admins ban, in case of repeated racist or sexist speech.
 * There are no laws, only common sense. However, banning is still an option in case of hacking, etc.
 * If anyone doesn't like the city, they can just leave, since there is no government.
 * Do anything possible to make sure that no one player has more influence than any other (no social or economic hierarchy), but always have the ban hammer at hand to keep things from getting out of control.


 * Fascism*
 * As described by Mussolini himself: "a union of corporation and the state".
 * Business leaders own the government and decide the laws; there can be no democracy anywhere.
 * Sentence any dissidents to hard labor, no matter who they are (even the elites!). Ban all political parties except for the one party.
 * There must be intense nationalism. Create a national anthem, and force the players to type it out every time they log on the server. Let there be a ridiculous penalty for anyone who sings it wrong.
 * Spend tax money on infrastructure designed to make business easier for the CEOs who own the government. Consistently keep a strong military to silence dissent, and to attack neighboring settlements and turn them into colonies (imperialism rules!).
 * There should be three tiers of society: the ruling business elites (whom we just talked about, the citizens (who own decent property and have decent jobs, but no political rights), and a randomly chosen group of "undesirables" (these you can treat as harshly as you wish and send them to concentration camps).
 * Let there be a server-wide contest regularly to pick out the strong from the weak; the weak are demoted to "undesirable" status (to model eugenics).


 * Fascism: another take
 * One person rules overall, the people are usually very divided on how much they like their ruler.
 * Some businesses or industries are operated or owned by the state like in socialism (see above). The land is owned by the state and players and/or businesses have to pay to use it.
 * Businesses are allowed to exist, but have to follow strict rules. Some examples include having to treat their workers well, not being allowed to make their prices too high, not being allowed to sell certain items, not being allowed to damage the environment too much, etc.
 * The state or nation rules supreme. The good of the nation is more important than individual players or businesses and your people are very patriotic and nationalistic.
 * Punish dissidents harshly! Exile them from the city, imprison them, force them to do manual labor, etc. You will need a strong police force.
 * Maintain a strong military to crush your enemies and even invade or conquer over cities.
 * Fascism was invented by a former socialist (Benito Mussolini), which is why it is similar.


 * Slave Lake Make everyone your slave! Make them farm, mine, and vote for you! A downside is they may turn on you. This is great for a lazy person!


 * Darkened Summer
 * There are 2 seasons, Summer and Winter. Summer is eternal night while Winter is eternal day.
 * They are controlled by the King of Fevers and the King of Chills.
 * Whoever has more power will have their associated season go into effect.
 * Run it with any other kind of government. Strength is determinable by anything, from the amount of popularity, to the area that they control, etc. etc.


 * Nightmare City
 * This is meant for large populations, and it's where every single thing is wrong.
 * Basically, everything that's bad about many of these government systems are the only rules here.
 * Total Anarchy is another option, for those who want absolutely no rules.


 * Theocracy
 * A form of government in which a god or deity is recognized as the state's supreme civil ruler. Since said god or deity is usually absent from decision making, a self-appointed or elected leader or leaders of the religion of said god or deity will rule instead through the personal interpretation of the laws commanded by the god in that religion's written law.
 * You could use real gods or deities, or make up your own! (Example: make the citizens believe in the religion of Apollo, or the religion of Intreksino).


 * Dalekism
 * There is a group of supreme players who rule and the others.
 * The supreme's goal is to  EXTERMINATE  the others or convert them (optionally).
 * The supremes are chosen by a yearly PVP battle between all the members of the server, the last 10 remaining are the supremes and they take all the loot of the others and  EXTERMINATE  them.
 * Based on the "Daleks" from Doctor Who".
 * Dalekism, another take There are two side - by - side cities, wimpy city, and  EXTERMINATION  city, wimpy city's job is to defend themselves, while  EXTERMINATION  's job is to  EXTERMINATE  wimpy city.


 * Containment
 * Useful if your country is in anarchy or high unrest. There are several "safe zones" in the city/country.
 * The safe zones are controlled by the police and/or army.
 * If you want, you can quarantine them. This means making it impossible or hard to get in or out.
 * The places which are not safe zones, are anarchy, (civil) war, apocalypse, etc.
 * Those are not controlled by the government and you can do whatever you want there.


 * Capitalist Paradise
 * You need to pay for nearly everything, which means the rich can do whatever they want.
 * The middle-class can afford basic to the good life and may or may not want changes.
 * The poor-class players live in poor districts where everything costs less.
 * The government wants only one thing: More resources and profit!


 * Colonialism
 * Only works if you have multiple cities.
 * The people who live in the capital oppress the other cities (colonies), they are mostly first class.
 * Aristocrats (first-class citizens) have the power in the smaller cities. They can make buildings, factories, shops, and thus provide work.
 * The people in the smaller cities need to listen to the aristocracy, or they will have no job and thus no income.
 * Usually pretty harsh for the poor citizens.


 * Semi-Communism
 * Everyone has a job. There are 5 jobs to choose from:
 * Lumberjack: Chops trees, shovels dirt, collects flowers, etc. Anything that can be done on the surface.
 * Farmer
 * Hunter: Hunts animals, and defends the town from mobs.
 * Miner: Mines anything that is underground, as opposed to lumberjacks.
 * Builder
 * People do not get paid for their work; rather, they work for the community.
 * Though, if someone does not go to work, then they cannot request things from other job departments. This ensures that everyone works.
 * The town council consists of 5 people, the heads of each job department. Those people are democratically elected by each department.


 * Auto-Run
 * There is no government. No leaders. No admins even. There are only command blocks. These command blocks are specially programmed to enforce the rules of this city.
 * While people may have their personal freedoms, the owner of the city can program the command blocks to enforce any set of rules, with varying degrees of strictness. There can be any system. It's simply not human run.


 * Marxist-Democracy
 * The common people hold most of the power. They propose and vote on all the laws, decide what the resources are used for, and can declare war on other countries.
 * There is an executive branch of the government that contains a president. The president is essentially a figurehead that meets with leaders from other countries and represents the nation as a whole. They are elected by a popular vote and can also be impeached by the citizens as well. The of power the president holds is that they can veto the laws that are passed by the people; however, the people can override the veto.
 * Every member of the country is trained in combat and serve in the military. When in times of war, one person is put in control of the military and who is elected in the same from as the president.
 * There also is a constitution that lays out the ground rules that the nation will follow. It can determine how long the president can serve the people, what percent of the people are needed to override a veto, etc...
 * The economy is based off communism with the people holding specific jobs and working for the good of the entire nation. All materials are collected and held in a government storage facility. People that do not work could have their voting rights taken away, be thrown in jail, or whatever the constitution/laws decide.
 * This form of government works best within a city-state or the same group of people that can be all of the same mindset (to avoid revolutions).


 * Order 669
 * This system is partly TPK style but with a few major tweaks.
 * There is one leader, the administrator/server owner, but they can appoint other players as operators to rule beneath them and to be his or her army captains.
 * Villagers represent the common people and players rule them as the elite class.
 * Primary commerce is trading, encouraged with villagers or other players, but other commerce is done via a hub usually at coordinates (0,0). Command blocks are there for obtaining items that are NOT obtainable from trading with villagers. The players obtain the items via /give. Each item has a given price and players must pay that price in order to leave the hub.
 * Hostile mobs, especially illagers, represent the public's common enemy. The goal of the players, besides ruling the villagers, is to kill any hostile mobs that they find. Iron golems are the players' bodyguards and wolves represent the army.
 * The leader of the players can tax the villagers (i.e., can have a command block with /give to give themself emeralds every so often as if they were coming from the villagers).
 * There are minimal laws, such as no murdering and no hacking. You may grief or troll, but only with permission from an operator. Upon breaking a law, players are either executed (i.e. teleported into a pit of lava) or imprisoned (i.e. teleported to a jail cell after their inventory is cleared).
 * Mines and mob farms are allowed only with a license (i.e. a name tag named License) and players will be using their own materials, unless otherwise specified. Crop farms are allowed without a license.
 * A player can petition the government to build them a generic house for a certain amount of money, or if they want a custom house, they must build it themselves.
 * Non-operator players are forbidden to program command blocks, but they can use already-programmed command blocks.
 * Emeralds are the primary currency, but lapis, redstone, quartz and diamonds are strongly recommended as convertible currency.


 * Commercialism
 * A system all about profit! Have an appropriate government and stock on profits!
 * A currency and lots and lots of shops and a few marketplaces are optional or required.
 * Multiplayer is recommended.


 * If you can think other systems of government, feel free to put them here! (Tip: Put the suggestions above this line, not beneath it.)

More Ideas
Here are more ideas for a metropolis that do not fit any of the previously mentioned categories.


 * Building Contest Hold a contest where the players build structures. The structures can be pretty much anything, ranging from houses and flying machines to pixel art. Include various prizes, such as rare blocks, and make sure to have a few judges. (At least two are recommended). After it's over, winners' entries stay up (and, if you have WorldEdit or structure blocks, you can even move them somewhere else), while the losers' entries can be taken down. If you need to build an important building, like city hall or central railway station, you can host a design competition where the winning design gets built or is moved to the right place with WorldEdit or structure blocks.


 * Carpenter Have a carpentry where you can purchase expansions onto your house, as well as have houses built or destroyed. Make the currency to purchase not too cheap, but not too expensive, for example, 5 emeralds for a room 5×9, or whatever you decide. Another example could be 10 emeralds for a 12×12 garage with a fully openable door with redstone. Or you can do other things like making the price cheaper, if they give the carpenter some items to build with, if not free, if all needed items are given.

Ideas: Add mobs, bounty hunters and guards and turn it into a "game". Relatives of the criminals can send in healing potions and food and other supplies. If (somehow) they survive then either
 * Deadly Labyrinth Use the general maze building idea but only add lethal traps and dangerous mobs. Add viewing windows and station armed and armored guards at each exit and window. Only throw criminals and griefers in. Make the walls as strong as possible.
 * 1. Give them a reprieve OR,
 * 2. Make them fight in the arena


 * Defense Don't let the monsters take over the city! Make sure you have walls around your metropolis. You can put cacti on top of the wall to keep spiders out. You can also add archer towers if you want. Just make a 3×3 square on the wall with ladders to get up to them. Add moats with lava for the death of your enemies. Just be creative!


 * Factions Make factions for small groups like warriors, miners, lumberjacks, knights, farmers, et cetera.


 * Field Trip Hold field trips for the kids at school! You can take them to a museum, or even pay a visit to a nearby village and give them a small lesson on trading.


 * Fire Hydrant In every important building, put a water bucket in an item frame, so that if a fire somehow starts it can be removed simply by a right-click.


 * Fireworks Show Use a bunch of redstone, dispensers, and different types of fireworks to make a special firework show!


 * Foreign trade Make a foreign trade where only the government workers are able to trade out some of the tax "money" they receive to purchase items not available in their region.


 * Games Build an area where players can play games like (note: many of these games are only playable in multiplayer):


 * Abnegation: It is played in the Nether. The goal is to run around stealing dragon eggs (placed by admins) while avoiding lava and ghasts, and navigating floating platforms.


 * American Football:' Hold your own Superbowl, or just a little one-on-one in a field not unlike the football field of today. You could have the teams wear dyed leather armor, and your football could be a diamond. Just be sure to have all your players empty their inventory into a chest or two. The rest is up to you.


 * Trade hall: Put villagers in cages in a room. Have players trade with them. Add decoration!


 * Dodgeball: Have players divide into two teams, each having sixty-four snowballs. When you say go, the two teams will start throwing and dodging snowballs.


 * Capture the Block: Have one chosen player, have a randomly chosen item or block, the goal of the game is to get that block and keep it at all costs (if you want you cannot tell who has the block and have other players try to find the one item/block).


 * Drop Party: Players are put in a room while the admin drops items like pistons, sugar, lava and nether portal blocks (random items and blocks). All of these can be taken home later.


 * Grand Theft Egg!: Put an dragon egg in a big dungeon with hostile mobs and traps. If a person or team manages to get the egg and back out they win.


 * Graveyard: A Graveyard with spawners under graves. Hide chests with armor and weapons. 4+ Players.


 * Maze For fun you could build a giant maze, or a labyrinth filled with zombies and skeletons. Make it as dark as possible with traps and pits. Or a lovely pink one with plenty of light. Maybe a hedge maze is to your taste. Possibly a neat, complex forest maze will satisfy your hunger for something to do. Or you can be cruel to your test subjects and use pistons and timed randomizers to make an ever-changing puzzle.


 * Night Fight: Not so much a game as the ultimate Survival training exercise. Give each player a set of leather armor, a stone sword, a bow with ten arrows, and five carrots. Put then all into a big desert or plains biome and put a few zombie, skeleton, creeper, spider, and silverfish spawners at the edges. Make a big fence around the perimeter. Turn off PvP and mobGriefing, so that creepers don't blow the plains or desert up, and turn the contestants to adventure mode, so they can't break the spawners. At evening, bring in the contestants. Everyone alive at sunrise gets a prize and gets to keep the mob and player drops.


 * Paintball: Players are put in an arena. They are given bows and arrows then fight but remember winner takes all. There are multiple variations like Cap the Block, Domination, President and Regular. For additional accuracy, give players colored leather armor with only 1 hit point left, so that it will break upon receiving damage from a bow shot.


 * President: A member of both teams is given a leather cap (the "president"), then the first team to kill the others "president" wins.


 * Cap the Block: A game where a dirt block is placed in the arena, then players have to retrieve the block and place it in their base.


 * Domination: Same as Cap the Block, but there are multiple blocks in the arena. The first team to get the most wins.


 * Pig Hunt: Build an arena with pig spawners in the middle and a colored pit at the corners. Players get one carrot and abduct pigs. Can be done with zombies for DEATH!


 * Pork Pusher!: A game that includes a big, black, hollow box with a glass pane screen representing a TV. The inside is decorated colorfully. Outside, by the screen, are 3 levers representing joysticks on video game controllers. The levers operate 3 pistons, inside the TV. The player attempts to push a pig around as many times as they can. If the player makes 20 successful pushes, they push a button that drops a cooked porkchop on them. If the player fails, they push a button that opens a pit below them, leading to their death.


 * Pressure-plate Fishing: Put a 3×3 chamber with a hollow tube in the middle. Create multiple of these, and remove the middle walls. Then, put a hole in the front, middle, top section of the chamber and cover the tops of the chambers. Wire the pressure plate to redstone. The player uses a fishing rod to try to hit the pressure plate.


 * Puzzle House A series of rooms that require the user to use logic in order to move on to the next room such as a hidden door behind a painting or a code written on signs needed to find the correct sequence of levers to pull. Leave it for someone to figure out. You could also charge people admission and add a time limit. Whoever gets out before the clock stops. gets a prize. Here are some challenges and puzzles that you could add.


 * Spleef: Make a large, flat-topped arena (dirt) and have two teams try to dig under each other! Last player standing wins!


 * Super Tamer: Have lots of players get a stack of bones and have them tame as many dogs as they can. They may not want the dogs, so they may kill ones they don't want. Can be done with cats for an extra challenge.


 * Target Time!' A game where a bow is used to shoot a wool target. It can be more of a challenge when the wool is moving around.


 * Trick or Treat: Make a large room with a "town" in it. Inside the buildings there will either be another player which will give you prizes, a villager which you can trade with (via a chest full of emeralds inside the building), or a dangerous mob. The dangerous mobs will either be zombies, skeletons, cave spiders, hostile wolves, silverfish, or blazes. The buildings are made of nether bricks, with gravel roads and cobblestone stairs.


 * Wolf-run!: A game where there are wolves. Hit and run and see who can survive the longest. 2+ players.


 * Ghastbusters Gather up some players to go to the nether and fight ghasts and blazes. Give them Fire Resistance, potions and enchanted bows and watch the ghast tears pile up!


 * Historical District Make this part of your city more historical such as medieval buildings, Victorian buildings, any old fashioned era you can think of! Make sure there's a good few museums around here. You can even go back to the time of the Neanderthals!


 * Holidays Have special days to celebrate. They can be real or fictional, just have fun!


 * Hunger Games Make 24 players fight to the death in a large arena and add game-changers across the area. Add a large base of supplies at the spawn, then let them all loose!


 * Interior Design Nobody wants to live in a house without furniture! In every house you build (you should end up building a lot of them), add special furniture. Use pistons or fences with pressure plates for tables, stairs and signs for chairs, and bookshelves to decorate your houses. Try making a computer with an iron block and a painting, plus redstone and a lever to be a mouse.


 * Law enforcement Add a set law enforcement such as regular police, the FBI or the CIA, for example. Make the tasks as in real life. Regular police patrol streets and do normal desk work, the FBI do even more desk work and some light crime investigation, and the CIA does most of the crime investigation.


 * Mob of Honor Why not have a mob that your city honors? Choose any animal or monster to pay tribute to. You can hold festivals, build statues and memorials, or you can even make the citizens in your city that kind of mob!


 * National Park Close off an area of your metropolis and leave it how it is, with forests, caves, villages, plains, deserts, taigas, snowy tundras, oceans, rivers, temples, abandoned mineshafts, strongholds, dungeons, jungles, etc. Make a "Leave No Trace" rule here (for example, if someone builds something, they have to take it down, once they are done using it, they have to replace blocks they destroy with the same block, they have to use spawn eggs to replace anything they kill, etc.), and if they do not follow it, they will go to Minecraft prison (which is mentioned above). While constructing your national park, make cabins for guests to stay in, with a few bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, a kitchen, a balcony, etc., and use gravel roads to connect them. If there is a stronghold located within your national park, you can dig down until you get to the stronghold and then add ladders or stairs so people can get there. It is also advised to activate the End Portal. National parks can also be made in The Nether, with the same rules as Overworld national parks.


 * Nether Access Build a nether portal and let people get to the Nether. Even better, if it spawns you right next to a nether fortress, then you can make a tour and block off dead ends. Or just make a netherrack mine. Build a nether-style building around the portal so people can easily see where it is. Cannot be made in The End or Nether cities, consider "Overworld Access" there.


 * Olympic Games Build a massive stadium with different racing and hurdles events. Outside the stadium, you could build a massive spleef and archery arena, where contestants can compete against each other.


 * Parkour Area Test your parkour skills out! Place hard-to-jump to blocks, and place them in random areas. Also, make more challenges, like nausea for the whole course.


 * Pest Patrol When annoying mobs invade, call the pest patrol! Remember to include tamed wolves, tamed ocelots, iron and snow golems. Don't forget weapons and armor! Have a chest for them to put mob drops in.


 * Pet Show For both cats and dogs. Have events like cats scaring creepers into a pit, and dogs killing as many mobs as they can. WARNING: The animals might die, so be careful! Have pets enter one at a time, and heal them between rounds.


 * Playground Square off an area and build a jungle-gym for the little ones! This creation can include slides, ladders, bridges, huts, and other things like that. Be creative! Also, make sure you build a sitting area for the parents to relax!


 * Protocols Have protocols! Invite your citizens to the protocol and talk about government changes, e.g., higher taxes. No, not taxis, taxes!


 * Public Park Set aside a large grassy area with lots of trees. A lake or a river would look nice, so try to build it near one of these. If players are caught dropping unwanted items on the ground, charge a fee for littering. Fountains, statues and other decorative things can be used to make it more attractive.


 * Races This would be an arena that is long and has seating on the sides (they could be going up like a slope) dig a 1+ block deep canal in the middle and have it at least 5 to 6 blocks wide. Fill it with water source blocks. Put some turns and obstacles in it and you can have boat races! Or, instead of using water, keep it dry and race on pigs or on foot, with speed potions in the latter case.


 * Redstone Build weird mechanisms with redstone in your buildings or make areas full of them that makes your city look more advanced. You can do things such as wiring all the buildings, so they have electric lighting. Or make a clock tower, or track your resident's movements, or have streetlamps that turn on at night.


 * Religion You can make up your own religion that you want your citizens to follow. This religion can include myths and legends about things, such as the ender dragon!


 * Rubbish Bins In the streets of your city, you could have chests simulating rubbish bins. Purely decorative. Better with resource packs. You could even have a sanitary system, and use these "bins" for things you don't want, like rotten flesh. You could ( only) add hoppers beneath and add a water flow or minecart, so it goes to a disposal center or lava.


 * Save the Mobs When passive mobs invade the streets, call a group to keep mobs from making traffic jams and put those mobs in a farm where they belong. Better established if a group would previously dispose of other mobs killing the passive mobs.


 *  Spawn Base Build a big building as a spawn building for people to spawn in. Put a gate, command give items, and city law and rules to show to newer players to the city.


 * Story Make your city have a secret backstory, some hidden evil lurking in the darkness, and maybe even recruit some players on a server to role-play for the citizens of the city. At some point, the citizens may have to go into a battle against the Dark Lord or some other monster army. Make sure to add lots of detail and make it exactly as you imagine it to be!


 *  Training Make a massive training area that teaches the player every single trick in the book of Minecraft. From splash potion jumping, to sniping with the bow and arrow. If you think that the player is experienced (both in terms of skill and actual XP points) enough, then it is possible you can recruit them for a guard.


 *  War Minecraft has never been peaceful (unless you play peaceful) and never will be. Build forts, bunkers and wage war against castles full of traps, monsters (creepers are not recommended), other players and challenges. Build TNT cannons and build an army. Award loyal soldiers with positions like general or lieutenant.


 *  Weapons License In a peaceful city, players shouldn't be running around murdering people! You can set up a system where anybody holding a weapon without a license is thrown in jail. Set a price and expiration date and only let trusted citizens own them.


 * WMD Lab If you have nuclear war or bacteria mods, then you can use this as an animal breeding ground or assembly base. Make a big, multi-level building, add iron doors and branch off into smaller labs. Add crazy experiments and (if legal) you can use POW's (prisoners of war) as test subjects. Make sure there are no windows. Security is likely to be tight.

Currency
Try having a currency so people can buy and sell things in your city. Good currency is usually something with practical value that follows a non-finite standard to prevent inflation. Therefore, great currencies to use are emeralds and emerald blocks (which are worth 9 emeralds each). This has the added benefit of allowing you to make villager shops with no difficulty. Another good currency would be Brick = $1, Iron = $10, Gold = $25, Diamond = $50 and Emerald = $100. If you have a mod that adds more minerals to your game, then use those too. Here's a list of common currencies with notes about their usage:
 * Cobblestone: As one of the most common items, this is a good material for small transactions such as building supplies (ex. 5 Cobblestone = 1 Glass Block) and farm materials
 * Wood Planks/Logs: This is a good all-around easy to use currency, and it has a definite and well-defined value in crafting and building. It is hard to make automatic Wood farms, so "money farming" is more difficult
 * Wheat/Bread: Wheat and Bread (also Carrots, Potatoes, and Beetroot) serve as an excellent currency. Though they can be farmed, a slight issue, these are very useful and Villager-trading accepted items great for small currency. The farming aspect of these items is not enough of an issue that these should not be used, however
 * Bricks: The only practical advantage to using Bricks as money is that they look like Iron and Gold Ingots, making them recognizable as currency immediately. They are not able to be farmed, a good thing for a currency, but are nearly useless except to builders of brick buildings. The same also goes for Nether Bricks
 * Literature: Paper, Books, and Bookshelves, though farmable and mostly useless, could serve as a currency. Knowledge is power, right?
 * Coal: This is a very helpful and obtainable resource, making it a perfect currency. It is very difficult to farm as well
 * Redstone: First, beware of using Redstone as currency, as it tends to be very easy to find. It is very cheap, so it could be used a small currency (Like a half-dollar)
 * Nether Quartz: Though occasionally useful in building or redstone, nether quartz is not as great of a currency as Diamond or Wood. However, being non-farmable and mildly useful, it is an adequate currency
 * Iron: This is a handy material for currency since it has 3 "levels", those being Nugget, Ingot, and Block. For example, 1 Iron Nugget may be worth 2 Cobblestone, and an Iron Block may be worth a Diamond. Be careful though, since iron is easily farmed. However, the effort an Iron Farm takes may make it worthwhile as a currency
 * Gold: Similar to Iron, but rarer. Since Gold farms are harder to make, Gold is harder to abuse as a currency.
 * Diamond: Diamonds are arguably the best multiplayer currency, as they are rare, their value is well-defined, and they are not farmable
 * Emerald: An all-around helpful currency as Emerald is compatible with Villagers, but beware of making Emeralds worth too much as they can be bought quite cheaply by anyone with a Paper or Wheat farm
 * Nether Stars/Beacons: A very hard to collect item, the nether star would make an excellent currency. It could be worth, say, 20 Diamonds. It is not farmable and very useful, making it as perfect of a currency as Diamond or Wood
 * Money Plugins: You could find a plugin that is for money, use that for currency. It could involve transactions, etc.
 * Money Commands: If you are good with redstone, you could set up a system with command blocks that tracks a player's "money", without it being easily hackable with creative mode server builders.

Roads
Roads are present in virtually every city, but making them look nice is actually more complicated than one might expect.

To start, roads tend to be direct, fast, smoothly curved routes. Certainly, any road that isn't at least about 7 meters wide shouldn't have 90-degree bends that are intended to run without stopping.

Roads also tend not to be steep, in real life, anything over 1/2 block up or down for every 6 blocks horizontally would be considered moderately steep. Anything more than about 1/2 block up for every 3 blocks horizontally for long sections would be considered very steep, and other than in mountainous terrain, be limited to residential streets.

In Minecraft, terrain tends to vary on a smaller scale than in real life, and be much steeper as well.

Usually, long, wide "highway" type roads are as straight as possible, as cheap as possible, and require the least amount of terraforming possible. If there is a 30-meter-wide circular crater, sweeping around it smoothly is usually better than bridging it.

If there is a tall mountain in the way, going straight up it is not likely to be cheap to make or easy to travel. Go slightly up and around, if there needs to be a route to the top, make it connect to the main road and spiral up the mountain.

There are also multiple scales and types of roads with different qualities.


 * City Street:
 * Recommended material, gray/black concrete and yellow terracotta.
 * Should have clear lanes.
 * Should have a lot of intersections and traffic lights.
 * Should be 3-9 blocks wide.
 * Should have many branch-offs.
 * Should cut through any obstacle that can be removed in less than a minute.
 * Should not be too steep.
 * Should wind around any other obstinate that is too big to remove.


 * Dirt/sand/terrain path:
 * Recommended material: Dirt, sand, grass path or podzol.
 * Should wind around any obstacle, even small trees.
 * Should be 1 to 3 blocks wide.
 * Can be any reasonably walk-able steepness (up to 1/2 slope, otherwise, it is more of)


 * Gravel/partial cobble path:
 * Recommended material: Gravel, or gravel with some cobblestone mixed in
 * Should wind around anything that can't be altered with a shovel or axe in less than a minute, and certainly shouldn't bridge anything unnecessarily. (So bridging a small river or stream would be fine, but lakes, not so much.)
 * Should be 2 to 3 blocks wide.
 * Can be any reasonably walk-able steepness (up to 1/2 slope).


 * Cobble/Stone brick path:
 * Recommended material: Cobblestone or stone bricks.
 * Should wind around anything that requires more than a small amount of pickaxing to destroy. These generally should not be connected to any large long bridges, only small stone or wood ones with no extra support needed.
 * Should be 2 to 3 blocks wide.
 * Can be any reasonably walk-able steepness (up to 1/2 slope).


 * Small rural gravel or partial-stone road:
 * Recommended material: Gravel or stone.
 * Should wind around any natural structure or well-established construction. Feel free to cut away absolutely any plant life, but limit pickaxes to flattening hillsides for road to be placed on. (This doesn't mean flattening mountains — just small hills.)
 * Should be 3 to 7 blocks wide.
 * Should generally be under 1/3 slope.


 * Small rural stone-material road:
 * Recommended material: Stone, cobblestone, stone bricks
 * Should wind around any natural structure or well-established construction. Feel free to gouge out rock-formations, place support-beams, etc as needed for road to be placed on.
 * Should be 3 to 7 blocks wide.
 * Should generally be under 1/3 slope. But avoid sloping in general as long as it doesn't mean tunneling through mountain-ranges or bridging valleys.


 * Small downtown street:
 * Recommended material: Stone, obsidian, or some other road-like material (IE basalt pavers from RedPower, if you have it installed).
 * Keep it as straight as possible, even if terraforming is needed.
 * Keep it as flat as possible, even if terraforming is needed, it may be small, but remember, thousands of people, rickshaws, pigs, horses, cars, chariots, carriages, magic carpets, elephants or pod racers use it daily.
 * Should generally be the equivalent of 1-2 lanes with 2 sidewalks, this could be anywhere from 5-17 blocks wide if sidewalks are included.


 * Small commuter street:
 * Recommended material: Stone, obsidian, or other road-like materials.
 * Should be direct, efficient, but cost-effective as well, tunnels and bridges are fine, but only if they are needed. Preferably at most 1/4th slope. Small to large stores can be nearby.


 * Large downtown street:
 * Recommended material: Stone, obsidian, or other road-like materials.
 * Terraform any and all hills, this should absolutely be no more than 1/6th slope with very few bumps.
 * Don't put these in on a mountainous city unless they are being supported on columns, they look silly when they are super steep. These should also be fairly straight, and never next to houses. Put large buildings near these.


 * Large commuter street:
 * Recommended material: Stone, obsidian, or other road-like materials.
 * Should be direct, efficient, but cost-effective as well, tunnels and bridges are fine, but only if they are needed. Preferably at most 1/4th slope with very few bumps. Medium to large stores can be nearby.


 * Suburban street:
 * Recommended material: Stone, cobblestone, or stone bricks.
 * 1-2 lanes equivalent, a small sidewalk or possibly not, purely houses nearby. Can be up to 1/3, or possibly even 1/2 slope. Should do as little earth-moving as possible and doesn't need to be very efficient as a through street. Typically 3 to 11 blocks wide.


 * Intercity Highway:
 * Recommended material: Stone, obsidian, or other road-like materials.
 * Curves around things, but avoids sharp curves at all costs. Generally stays flat and direct with no stopping areas. Only becomes steep to go through mountain passes. Does not dodge light construction, simply tramples straight through it. Bridges anything but moderate-sized oceans. Typically 15 to 23 blocks wide, but may be smaller in pre-industrial societies.


 * Mega-Highway:
 * Recommended material: Pretty much anything road-like you can get your hands on.
 * Goes nearly straight, never exceeds about 1/8th slope, obliterates or bores through anything necessary excluding centers of cities or enemy territory (then wars are fought over its construction) Cities are literally built around it. Typically at least 31 blocks wide, but may be smaller in pre-industrial societies. May literally bridge medium-sized oceans in order to cut down on travel time. Designed to carry any and every road-traveling land-vehicle made by the society building it. No bridge type or tunnel is too expensive or extravagant for something like this.

Specialty Roads

 * Clay Road:
 * Recommended material: Clay or terracotta.
 * Make a road that is 3-7 blocks wide, keeping turns and slopes at a minimum. If you must go over a hill, gently slope the road with stone slabs. If the incline you encounter is more than 1 block up for every 5 to 7 blocks horizontally, use stone brick stairs or change to a similar type of road. The middle block use redstone. For an automatic lighting system connect a daylight sensor to a NOT gate, and then a redstone lamp. This road type can bridge moderate gullies, ponds, valleys, and small pits are good for rural areas and work well in flat areas. Decorative stone brick guardrails are acceptable.


 * Musical Road:
 * Recommended material: Note block, wooden pressure plate.
 * This road type is actually a feature that can be applied to just about any moderately sized road. Dig out a 1 block wide trench along the middle or side of your road, and place note blocks (with the desired material underneath, see Note Block) in this trench. Adjust the pitches as necessary, and fill in the spaces between note blocks in more complicated melodies. Lastly, place wooden pressure plates on top of the note blocks, and now it is possible to ride along the road and listen to music at the same time.


 * Nether brick Road:
 * Recommended material: Nether bricks, netherrack, glowstone.
 * Create a 5 block wide road of nether bricks, leaving holes 2 blocks long and separated by one block of Nether bricks along the entire stretch of road. In the first empty space of every hole place a block of netherrack and in the second space, place a block of glowstone (these two can be interchanged). In the style of a nether fortress, this road type is perfectly straight and level, bridges all gaps with huge support columns and bores through any material, using the terrain as the roof and possibly walls of the tunnel. In 1.10, you can add magma blocks under glass for lighting rather than glowstone.


 * Redstone Ore Road:
 * Recommended material: Redstone ore, stone bricks.
 * It's not cheap or easy to get, but if you have a silk touch-enchanted pickaxe or a large amount of redstone ore on hand, you can use it to make a road that lights up wherever you walk (or be boring and place redstone torches underneath to make it perpetually lit). A stone brick curb is eye-pleasing, although the continuous redstone ore may become monochromatic and dull after a while, in which case you could introduce a creative design down the middle of the road. The downside of this road type is that the redstone ore could give away your position to other players on a multiplayer server, even if you are invisible.


 * The Tube:
 * Recommended material: Iron or any other metal.
 * Make a road 3-7 blocks wide and add minecarts and rails (powered or regular), then surround it in a circular type of tube and add torches or glowstone on fences. Stack the fences 2 up then put the glowstone/torches on it.


 * Unusual material:
 * Build your road out of an unusual block, such as ores or wood.

Freeways
A freeway is a road designed for high-speed vehicular traffic. No walking or parking is allowed in freeways, so allow only people riding pigs or horses to use it. Entrances and exits should be provided only at intersections that connect to other roads. Opposing directions of travel should be separated by median strips or barriers. The road should be about thirty blocks wide and as flat as possible. Bridges and tunnels can be built whenever needed. You can also include road tolls the players have to pay in order to use the road.

General Block Palette
It is often advised that, for a specific type of construction, you stick to a specific palette of block-types, to make your city more organized. Example block palettes include:
 * Minecrafter: Use mostly cobblestone and wood, use torches for lighting and glass panes for windows.
 * Medieval: Don't use materials which couldn't be easily obtained in a medieval world. For example, don't use concrete or redstone mechanisms, and use glass very sparingly. Different variants of stone and wood are the best materials to use in construction.
 * Advanced Minecrafter: Use stone bricks roofs, brick, birch planks and/or spruce plank walls.
 * Rustic/Farm: Use almost all planks and logs, with small holes in the walls made with stairs, make rooms irregularly shaped with 1x1 windows (holes in the wall).
 * Skyscraper: Made with concrete, quartz, or iron blocks with massive cyan or light blue glass windows, sea lanterns for lighting.
 * Futuristic: Use plenty of quartz and glass blocks (basically anything white).
 * Aquatic: Use prismarine, with glass block windows and sponges as decorations
 * Nether: Use nether bricks detailing like window boxing, and use lava and magma blocks for lighting. Build walls with quartz, red nether bricks, nether wart blocks, etc. You can use obsidian as a foundation.
 * End: Use end stone bricks and purpur, with end rods for lighting and shulker boxes for storage.

This helps other builders, and yourself, to make creations that "fit" together, instead of a random mix. It also helps the build stay consistent. However, following the palette isn't always necessary, as different-looking buildings can make your city look more varied and interesting.

Jobs
Job Search Center: A place that helps those new to the server to find work. (Salary paid per day.)

After you have built your city, every citizen should have work. Here are some examples of jobs the citizens of your city can work, along with a recommended salary:

A - D

 * Actor/Actress: Works in plays. Salary: Paid by the show's tickets.


 * Animal Pro: Works with pigs, wolves, and ocelots. Also works at the pet store and dog pound. Salary: 12 emeralds.


 * Apothecary: Makes positive (sometimes negative) potions and sells to players. Salary: 30 emeralds.


 * Army: Uses weapons for hunting rogue players, mob armies or even enemy armies! Should have stone to diamond ranged items. Salary: Varies by ranking.


 * Assassin: Kills off political or highly placed people for cash. Can be sent from enemy forts or cities attempting to shift the balance of power. Salary: Depends how much the person that hired them pays; beware as they could double-cross you.


 * Attorney: Also called a lawyer, this person can do one of two things: defend a convicted person, or convict a convicted person (no pun intended). The system works like this: a judge, two attorney teams (prosecution or defense), at least two witnesses, and of course, the criminal in question, go to a courtroom. The attorneys each give out evidence that their way is the most constitutional. Then, the judge decides who is the winner, and that team gets their wish, either for the criminal to be convicted, or freed of all charges. In this system, the salary goes to the team who wins. Salary: 120 emeralds per team (they chose how to split it up between themselves).


 * Author: Writes books and trades them to librarian villagers or sells them to players. Salary: Paid per book sold.


 * Banker: Works with player's money in vaults. Make sure they are trusted or you could lose a lot of money! Salary: 80 emeralds.


 * Bar Tender: Serves drinks to players at a bar. Salary: 9 emeralds.


 * Blocks Builder: Creates all types of blocks to sell at retail, or use them to build. Salary: Sales profit.


 * Body disposal units: If a citizen dies or a test subject is terminated then these people take the equipment they drop and send it to a processing center. Any unused bits can be incinerated or stored. Salary: Depends on items collected.


 * Bodyguard: Hire people to be your bodyguards. Make sure you can trust them. Salary: 30 emeralds.


 * Broker: Sells used goods for fair prices, and accepts anything worth putting a price tag on. Salary: Sales profit.


 * Builder: Someone who builds buildings and shops. Salary: 45 emeralds.


 * Building Master: Someone who builds very big buildings, like malls, mansions, etc. Salary: 50 emeralds.


 * Butcher: A person who sells meat and kills pigs. Don't have this in the Peaceful Place. Salary: Depends on the meat and how much is sold.


 * Cashier: The cashier of a store. Salary: 12 emeralds.


 * Condo Chief: A person who owns a building, and receives the rent. They would have someone make the building and they would take care of any issues. Salary: Rent.


 * Cook: Someone in a restaurant kitchen. Salary: 40 emeralds.


 * Council Member: Part of a group that rules the city or advises the leader. Salary unknown.


 * Dancer: Dances. Dependent salary.


 * Demolitionist: Someone who destroys unwanted buildings. This is definitely a job for people who like to destroy things! Be careful when using TNT for this job, and only let people you trust to use it. The salary depends on the size of the job.


 * DJ: Someone who works at a disco and is in charge of the music. Salary: 20 emeralds.


 * Doctor: Looks after injured or poisoned people in the hospital. Salary: 40 emeralds.

E - H

 * Emperor: Rules an empire - lives in the capital. Salary: A percentage of the empire's taxes.


 * Executioner: Someone who executes condemned players and mobs in public. Salary varies by the notoriety of criminal. Example: murderer - 30 emeralds; thief- 10 emeralds; etc. Should try and wear dark clothes or a hood to avoid avenging relatives of the executed victims.


 * Factory Worker: Someone who works in a factory (above). Salary: 15 emeralds.


 * Farmer: Raises crops and farm animals, and sells to villagers or store owners. Salary: 10 to 20 emeralds.


 * Farm Hand: Helps a farmer raise crops and farm animals. Salary: 10 emeralds.


 * Fence: Buys stolen goods and sells them. Salary: Profit from selling said stolen items.


 * Gladiator: Battles mobs or other players in the arena. Salary: 40 emeralds.


 * Golem producer: Produces auxiliary iron golems and snow golems for either the Army or police force. Salary depends on the size of the contract.


 * Grinder operators: If you've built a mob or iron golem farm then these people can (if not automatic) collect the drops and put them on a transport minecart train. Make sure they're trusted or the drops may end up on the black market or get sold to another city to help their arms production. Salary: 30 emeralds.


 * Grocery Owner/Worker: Works at the Grocery Store. Salary: 15 to 30 emeralds.


 * Head of Public Power: A person who manages a public authority. This is a very important job. Salary: 100 emeralds.


 * High Miner: Mines only above layer 31. Salary: 8 emeralds.

I - M

 * Job Center Employee: Report offers available jobs, scheduling interviews, job offers add more to the list, etc. Salary: 21 emeralds.


 * Job Center Director: Manages the Job Search Center. Salary: 90 emeralds.
 * Knight: An elite warrior who follows the code of chivalry. Salary: 70 to 80 emeralds.


 * Judge: Sorts out lawsuits and picks the punishment for criminals. Salary depends.


 * Lab workers: Experiment on test subjects in the labs with potion effects and redstone contraptions. Use healing potions as much as possible on the subjects. If subjects die during testing, call in body disposal units. Salary: 40 emeralds.


 * Landscaper: A person who is hired to make your lawn look nice. Salary: Varies by the job.


 * Low Miner: Mines only below layer 32. Salary: 13 emeralds.


 * Mayor: Governs usually ¼ or ½ of the city, receives a great salary and lives in a big house. Salary: 100 emeralds.


 * Magician: Enchants items and makes potions. Salary is dependent upon skill.


 * Merchant: Buys things from the people that make them and sells them to the public. Salary: Profit made from selling said items.


 * Minecart Remover: If you have an underground railway then you do not want carts all over the place. This is usually a part-time job, but not always in a large city. Salary: 6 emeralds.

N - R

 * Nurse: Helps doctors and tends to patients when no doctors are open. Salary: 30 emeralds.


 * Personal cook: A cook who works for important people or the ruler of the city. Make sure they are trusted or they could try to poison the ruler. Salary: 50 to 85 emeralds. depending on skill level.


 * Philosopher: Thinks about stuff like metaphysics, ethics, mathematics, theology, logic and philosophy of science. Often gives advice to rulers. Salary: 50 emeralds.


 * Pilot: Sits in the front seat in an aircraft. Also tells passengers the remaining wait time and talks to the airport lander for accuracy, etc. Salary: 30 emeralds.


 * Police Chief: Runs the police force. Salary: 90 to 95 emeralds.


 * Police Officer: People who fight the night crime and stop griefing. Salary: 30 emeralds.


 * Police Officer K-9: Just a police officer except they work with their dogs. (Note: requires your dog.) Salary: 40 emeralds.


 * Pork Salesman: Sells pigs and carrots on a stick for all your transportation needs. Saddles included, of course. Salary: 15 emeralds.


 * President: Normally the ruler of the city. Doesn't necessarily have to be an administrator, and can even be the person who runs the server. Salary: Unknown.


 * Priest-King: Religious and political leader. Salary depends.


 * Professor: Someone to teach techniques in mining, construction, redstone, etc. Salary: 45 emeralds.


 * Real Estate Agent: Buys and sells houses. Salary: 30 emeralds.


 * Real Estate Boss: Controls the management of the sale of properties, commands the Real Estate agents, etc. Salary: 90 emeralds.


 * Redstone Technician: Someone who builds many mechanisms with redstone. Salary: 25 emeralds.


 * Repairer: Someone who repairs weapons and tools. Salary: Charges by the weapon.

S - U

 * Scientist: Makes potions, tests things, etc. Salary: 60 emeralds.


 * Smelter: Someone who is paid to smelt materials. Salary: Depends on amount smelted.


 * Snow Shoveler: Uses shovels to clear snow off of roads. Mainly used in taigas or tundras. Salary: Varies by the size of road and amount of snow.


 * Spawner Safety Guy: Travels through the Nether and Overworld encasing spawners in protective shields that make them safe to farm. Generally works on private jobs. Salary: Varies by the job.


 * Spy/Private Investigator: Uses potions of Invisibility to spy and looks through the chat, to find out about a player for another player. Salary: Varies by job.


 * Store Owner: Someone who bought a field, and is actually a store owner. Salary: Unknown.


 * Teacher: Someone who teaches students in schools about mining/crafting/brewing/building etc. Salary: 30 emeralds.


 * Terraformer: A person who clears large areas and makes it flat for buildings, clears the water, makes or removes caves and decorates areas or removes tall grass. Salary: Pays by job.


 * Thief: Not very legal. Steals stuff. Salary: The loot that's stolen.

V - Z

 * Vicar/Priest: Runs the church or temple. Could be another religion too. Salary: Unknown.


 * Wholesale Dealer: Buys items and sells them to stores buy stack or chest. Salary: Sales profit.

You can also tell the workers to use skins suitable for their jobs, or you can use mods to make these jobs even more realistic!

Houses
Houses are possibly some of the most important buildings in a city. They house most of its population and are usually used for social gatherings as well. In war-zones, houses may act as or be mixed with defensive fortifications as well.

Houses are rarely just dwellings with a bed, chest, furnace, table and door. They have multiple rooms, possibly multiple stories, and are often designed to accommodate between two and five times the number of people who are intended to live there for short periods (For example, as long as they brought their own beds/sleeping bags, there are enough chairs at the tables, etc., to support them).

Village House
Houses which look like village buildings are simple to make in Survival, as they use mostly common materials like wood and stone.

Realistic House
Blocks like terracotta and bricks can be used to make a realistic modern house.

Note: Buildings you can build are not limited to the ones in the list below, and designing your own buildings instead of using the ones in the list can make your city look more original.

Airy home: A home typically made of glass, or mostly glass, with lots of light. A good home for those who do not mind not much privacy and low security.

Home-Shop: A shop on the other floors above inhabits the owner. These are usually in a brownstone-like design, which the store on the bottom, and 1 or 2 floors on top of three shop.

Homeless Shelter: A place in which many people take refuge, about 2 floors and small rooms in which people live, only to extremely poor. This building is the ideal start to your life on the server.

Hotel: A building with small rooms players can rent for the night to stay in.

Custom House: Be creative! Surround the empty lot with planks or yellow terracotta or some other visible material to make a boundary and start building! Give an empty lot to a person who can get along and has the tone to build the house.

Shack or hut: a small structure meant to barely / almost accommodate the basic needs of one dead-broke family or individual. Village huts and swamp huts both fit in this category. Lots of land nearby, but rarely does the resident officially "own" it. They're typically made from wood and are usually single-story structures that aren't very large.

Minecrafter House: A one-floor house, but very broad and square, consists of 1 bathroom, 2 bedrooms, 1 hall, 1 basement, 1 dining room and kitchen. It has a roof terrace on the roof.

Minecrafter House 2: A two-story house with a porch, automatic parking of pigs, as L. It has a guest room and all the basics.

Pied-a-terre: A small living unit, such as apartment or condominium, used as a temporary second residence by its owner. Pied-a-terres are usually found in large cities, some distance away from the owner's primary residence. Pied-a-terres are usually owned by wealthy persons.

Small Shed: An ideal home for the rural area of 5X9. Very humble. Includes a basement. Usually, this consists of 1 bedroom, 1 kitchen, basement cellar, 1 corral pig, and a mini-crop field.

Average shed: Like a small shed, only with a 2nd floor, a breeding area, a porch, and generally just bigger. Also, typically has an additional stable.

Apartment Building: A tall building containing multiple apartments, almost always located in a city. Shorter than a skyscraper but usually taller than a normal house. The apartments might be owned by their occupants, or the occupants might have to pay rent.
 * Small apartment: Approximately 45 square meters internal area. This apartment is likely to be cramped, but also cheap. 1-3 rooms, 0-1 bathrooms, 1 bedroom.
 * Average apartment: Apartment with 1-2 bedrooms, 1-2 bathrooms, a kitchen, and at least one other room. Typically 80 to 150 square meter exterior.
 * Penthouse apartment: Singular or nearly singular nice apartment on the top floor of a high-rise building. Easily over 200 square meter exterior with at least 1 bedroom per couple/individual and many additional rooms of all sorts. Anyone who lives here is likely the equivalent of at least a millionaire.

Shed 3 story: As the name implies, with another barn.

Farm house: A house that's about 16x9, 2 stories, plus a basement, and a room with about 5 or 6 pens, for animal keeping.

Rural house: Often big, but made of poor-quality materials, and rarely have much structure above the second story. Typically has one or two stories, with a fairly large (up to 20 x 15) exterior, as well as various features such as bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, bathrooms, etc. Can have yards or farms surrounding the house, usually very big.

Comfy Home: Build a large house, preferably in a tundra biome. Make the house mainly out of oak planks. Make sure that the hallways are narrow and compact. If you have the time and resources, add a brick fireplace (Be absolutely sure that the wooden planks are not close enough to catch on fire!), add note blocks, bookshelves, paintings, tables, chairs, and other furnishings. This type of construction is best built when you have completed the majority of the more advanced necessities of Minecraft (ex. obtaining more than 8 diamonds). Use this home as a getaway from your regular home. Spend your vacation in your library writing the memoirs of your adventures.

Wooden Panel Home: Dig a 5x5 hole in the ground that is one block deep. Fill the hole with the wood planks of your choice (you might want to pick a type of wood you can get easily, as you'll be needing a lot of it). On each corner of the wood plank square, create a pillar of wood logs facing upwards (use the same type of wood that you used before. E.g. if you used birch wood planks, use birch logs). Make the pillar at least four blocks high. Then, connect all the pillars at the top with the same log type, facing sideways. You now have the frame of your house! Fill in the empty spaces with glass and wood planks in whatever design you prefer. Add a door and glowstone for lighting. Repeat this 4 more times, adding one more room on each side, and making your house in the shape of a "+". You now have a comfy, five-roomed wood panel house! Fill the rooms with anything you want, and add a second floor if you please. Note: Due to the need for much glass, glowstone and many, many, wood logs and planks, this is not a good house to make until you have amassed a good amount of resources

Skyscraper: A tall building with more than 40 floors. A skyscraper may host offices, retail spaces, and residential spaces. Due to their tallness, it might be a good idea to build an elevator inside the skyscraper to make the higher floors easier to access.

Other Homes and buildings
These buildings are sometimes very aesthetic and colorful.

 Modern home: A modern house is mainly used in the richer parts of cities, or you could make small ones for main homes (takes a long time!) make them out of lighter materials, and add dashes of color if necessary. The floor looks awesome with cyan wool or cyan carpet and be sure to add mini floors! (Mini floors are stories of a modern home that are up near the ceiling and have glass panes for fences.) Add smaller rooms off of the bigger ones.

Tudor Style House: Pick out a 6x6 area, and mark each corner with spruce logs. Fill in the walls with snow or white wool. Use spruce wood stairs to make the roof. Now add the essential furnishings and voila, a small yet beautiful Tudor style house.

Duplex: A two-story house, where both stories are separate apartments. Suggested size is around 14x14, with a kitchen, a living room, some bedrooms (at least one or two per floor), and a balcony. They can be made with things like bricks, wood, etc.

Suburban house: At least moderate-sized, usually gets a little bit of all mid-quality materials. Rarely very unique and often very squashed outside, but comfortable interior with at least 2 bedrooms. Should generally have 2 or more stories, being usually up to 15x15 in size, and having a small yard. These should also have at least two bathrooms.

Town-house: Usually 3 stories of roughly equal size with essentially no yard. Rarely over 8x10 wide, and placed in rows within 5 feet of each other. Like the suburban house, but more like 120–240 square meters area.

Tent: Very small, made of wool. Contains basic furniture such as a bed, crafting tables, a furnace, and stone or wood tools. Only for people that are new to city.

Big House: A beautiful house with rather expensive materials (such as quartz). It's big, and ideal for people who work for the president and the government. These should have around 2 to 3 floors (but you can go higher if you want), with a decently-sized kitchen, a dining room, at least two bathrooms, multiple bedrooms (including a master bedroom if so desired), a garden, and a living room. Optionally, you can add a mini-office and library, as well as other extensions.

Mansion: Any house which is unique and singular within a large area, much larger than necessary to support the people inside, extremely nice, has more area than any conventional home, and has more than 1000 square meters. Only used by nobles, politicians, celebrities and other extremely rich people.

Presidential House: A Giant House 3 Floors, of 62X72, much more than is necessary to survive. You can make it using quartz or any other material, with windows going from floor to ceiling, etc.

Other type of houses that don't fit in these categories: There are many, in fact, countless types that don't fit very well into any category mentioned above. Examples include: towers, tree-houses, mass-living areas, sleep-tubes, house-boats, converted asteroids, cave-homes, continuous mazes of rooms of all types, bridge-homes, general store-homes, gas station-homes, motor-homes, space-module houses, worker barracks, wall-houses, hive-apartments, bunker-houses, manor houses and even some more unusual builds.

Factories: Structures that produce items for your city to thrive.

Farms: Farms can grow and harvest crops to contribute to their city. Plant farms grow fruits, vegetable, and mobs.

Last Note
Whatever you decide, this is your city. These are just suggestions. Be creative and do whatever you want with it. You can use all the suggestions on this page or you can ignore everything and build the best city Minecraft has ever seen! It's your call, so get building!

After Building a Metropolis
After you've spent a long time building a city, you may think that is the biggest thing you can do in the Minecraft world, but this is not true. Minecraft has an infinite number of possibilities that you can do, that never run out. First of all, you can defeat all of the boss mobs in the Minecraft world, or complete all the advancements.

Cities, Structures, and More
If you have completed all the advancements, defeated all the boss mobs multiple times, have gathered several stacks of diamonds, and have made a city, consider modernizing your world. Here are some suggestions: Minecraft is a versatile world and you will never run out of the ideas of things to build, fight, and find. What you do in it is all up to you.
 * Make roads and railways to every part of your world that you ever go to.
 * Make multiple cities, with roads connecting them.
 * Build yourself a giant mansion.
 * Build every type of farm, and make as many as possible automatic.
 * Build a giant bridge across a whole ocean.