Tutorials/Building a metropolis

Ok. So you have a stack of diamonds, 15 full stacks of wood, and a huge storage room only for cobblestone, you may have even defeated the mighty Ender Dragon. Already crafted the beacon? Made a mob grinder? So what do you do now? Try building a Metropolis! A metropolis is a large city with many tall buildings and people. You will probably want flat land to start off with. There are flat areas in normally generated worlds (like Plains and Savannas but it is annoying that you must cut all the tall grass, water is a solution but it takes time again), but use superflat if you want a bigger city. However, you can use mods, plugins, or programs such as WorldEdit, MCEdit, VoxelSniper, and WorldPainter to clear land, or you can use a custom superflat preset to build your city in. It is recommended that you use creative mode to build your metropolis.

So where do you start? That's up to you!

Note


 * 1) When you are finished, you can upload your world to a server, as many of the suggestions are best suited for multiplayer.
 * 2) This tutorial should only be a reference, not a step-by-step lecture, make up your own ideas along the way.
 * 3) Please keep the Buildings list in alphabetical order!

Getting started
Before you can build your city, you'll need to find a spot to build it. A forest or some flat land with trees is probably a good place to build(super flat works best). For some of the suggestions on the list, you'll need a river, or even an ocean to build, so building near water is always a good idea. It is practical if you make it in survival to make a beacon in the first building so you can have Haste, Speed, etc.

Note: If your server has very few people, try recruiting your friends, or use villager spawn eggs! In addition, the city will no longer be so empty.

You can also choose a way that their city will be built after. Most preferably, Adventure. If so, players should get a starter kit of 32 emeralds and an iron axe so they can chop wood.

To start your city, you'll need to go to your selected building place and start building. Any sort of building will work, but you'll probably want to make it the center of your city, so keep this in mind while you build it.

Note: If you are building a metropolis in survival, its very likely that you will need an inventory editor or a massive cache of resources to build the metropolis in a timely manner. Depending on the size of the city, it may also be ideal to use more than one person.

You could also use MCEdit to spawn villager with custom trades.

Recommended Materials
There are a few different blocks recommended for use in buildings:


 * All stone materials (stone blocks, cobblestone, stone brick, etcetera )


 * Iron blocks


 * Wool (all colors)


 * Wood (house/building interiors)


 * Logs (supports/floors/interior walls)


 * Glass, glass panes, stained glass, or stained glass panes


 * Any half-slabs


 * Double slabs (with smooth side-faces)


 * Nether quartz blocks


 * Dyed hardened clay blocks


 * Bricks or stained clay


 * Bedrock or obsidian (place between two walls of blocks for extra protection.)


 * Granite, andesite, and diorite blocks (both smooth and regular) from snapshot 14w02 (these look good as floors (smooth) and paths (regular))


 * Rare and hard to acquire blocks such as emerald, gold, and diamond should be used sparingly, otherwise the buildings will look overdone. Use them on "punch-points" designed to draw attention, like spires or corners on rooftops in luxury or governmental buildings. Or, if you're using a mod, you can use ruby, sapphire, amethyst, et cetera . Note: It would be a good idea to protect the spires/corners from players in survival mode, as they can easily be mined and crafted into their components with an iron pickaxe.


 * Quartz for government buildings (to imitate marble)

Building Up
Now you have the start of your town. Did you make it a big fancy building, or a small house? The suggestions in this list are helpful if you aren't satisfied.

It is time to turn your building into a city. Depending on the size of your central building, this could take a long time, or be pretty fast. If you have a very large central building, make the others around the same size (but not too big.) If you have a small central building, consider taking off the roof and adding more floors on top. You'll need a few buildings for people to live in. If you plan on making a very big city, you'll need to make a lot of housing. This will probably be the most time consuming part of your city.

Note: If you are building your city in multiplayer with practical intentions, try to make it suitable for a playerbase of a decent or of a certain size. If you are making a very large city, make it capable of holding 300+ players, counting jobs and housing.

Residential Zone
To get a nice and large, yet organized residential area, do this:

1. Build a long road (about 30-200 blocks) coming from each direction out of your central building. Build the road out of any material. Some recommendations are Cobblestone, coal blocks, Obsidian, Gravel, Stone, or Nether Brick, although the last one makes more sense if it's in the Nether.

2. Now add more roads branching off of them, with spaces between 8-20 blocks between each branch-off.

3. In the space left, build houses on each side of the road. These houses should have some furniture, like lights, a bed, or maybe a chest with some things in it. If you have the Redstone Update, you can use the daylight sensor for a nice effect. Or, if you are feeling evil, do not give them the stuff mentioned above (they have to buy it!). You can make a complicated house market if you think it will improve your city, but that means a lot of work towards infrastructure and a strong economy.

General advice: large apartment buildings would go good mixed with shops as less effort is required to walk or transport to stores.

Note: The alternative to building houses is to simply section off land and allow other players to build their own homes - which is preferred by most.

Commercial Zone
Now that you have places for people to live, check that everything is in order, and then begin.

1. Continue the road for at least another 30 blocks.

2. Place a marker on the road, and continue extending it for about 50 blocks.

3. Once you have done this, start branching off from the side of the marker that is farther away from the residential zone. Start building stores, restaurants, and other services.

4. General advice: Many commercial enterprises are associated with trade. If the city is ancient to medieval, this is especially true.

Industrial Zone
1. Extend the road the same way you did for the Commercial Zone.

2. Branch off, but not as often, and make factories and other buildings.

3. General advice: Nobody likes to have a house with cluttered views of smog-belching factories, nuclear waste containment plants, bark dust manufacturers, coal-fired power plants, quarries, giant steam-powered looms, unstable science labs, or anything of that sort. 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.

4. Theme Advice : if it's a hostile/war city MAXIMIZE the size of this zone with war factories and ammunition storages.

Rural Zone
1. Extend the road the same way you did for the Commercial Zone.

2. Grow a farm that suits your place.

3. Build houses that suit your style. (Just one will work too, but for best results you'll want several.)

4. Add some extras to your house. (Examples include furniture, carpeting, etc.)

5. At the very end of the road, build farms.

Urban Zone
1 - Make a great, wide road, with many lanes for pigs, horses, donkeys, or mules.

2 - Make ramifications (framework) for tall buildings. If your city isn't modern or has a specific no-skyscraper rule or something, then instead make ramifications for buildings that are semi-tall and quite large horizontally.

3 - Make skyscrapers with offices owned by a rich company. If your city is medieval, ignore this part.

4 - For added detail light the buildings with redstone lamps. Again, ignore this in medieval cities.

5 - Put a house for the Leader here.

6 - If desired, make a Wonder such as a giant statue or mosaic in the Center.

Capital
1. Make a road like the urban one.

2. Build large, luxurious houses for the elite citizens of your city.

3. Build very important buildings here, such as a Capitol, and put shops with very high-priced goods here too!

4. Put a statue of the leader there if you want to, which looks good made of gold. You could also make it out of a lighter green block, such as hardened clay, to make it look like an old, copper statue.

5.For a modern suggestion, have skyscrapers made of mostly glass, quarts and other blocks beside bricks, cobble, netherack, and of course noobish blocks.(dirt, etc)

6.For a more advanced city, build highways and tourist attraction such as museums.

7. Make a overly sized (or big) mansion that no one can live in, unless they are the mayor/king/emperor/.

Advice: you do not have to do the last step.

Port
1. Build a road heading towards an ocean (or a river connected to an ocean).

2. Build a large dock with boats of various sizes, as well as spots where people can get boats (entity, not structure) to use. Some shops related to the ocean (IE fish/fishing shops) can also be placed on the dock.

3. If you want, you can build some warships. These can be used as your city's navy (or just decoration, since unfortunately that's all block ships are good for currently).

4. If desired, build a shipyard! You can hire people to build ships here, and then if you have WorldEdit, you can relocate said ships to the water easily. (Or you can just put completed and unfinished ships in there for eye candy purposes only.)

Suggestions
Here's some ideas to get you started on your city!

City Themes

 * Animal Town: Build buildings out of dirt and grass or wood for houses. Build stables and grazing fields so animals can eat and have shelter from the harsh weather. Have a breeding station and a shearing station for sheep. Build a station for saddling pigs and horses. Build a slaughterhouse, and other things you would find in a town of animals. Make the citizens all animals, and to prevent them despawning name them with a name tag; this also adds some fun to your animal city.


 * Atlantis: Make a city on the ocean floor with nothing separating your city from the water! However, you and all of your inhabitants will have to be on creative mode, as if they are on survival, hardcore, or adventure mode, they will drown unless they have the Water Breathing status effect on. Make buildings out of sponges, diamond blocks, gold blocks, and/or glass blocks, put cauldrons on the floor and fill them up for a water floor, and use iron doors to get in the buildings!


 * Beanstalk: This city is a combination of a sky city and a vertical city. First, build a very tall tower completely out of leaves or green wool (or both). Use vines to get up, and add buildings sticking out of the tower. Once you get above layer 127 (the cloud layer), change your buildings materials from leaves/green wool to normal wool or snow. You can make the buildings out of either wool/snow or wooden planks and stone (normal building materials). You can even build an ENORMOUS capital and spawn giant to run the city. If you do spawn a giant for your mayor, also get a civilian of your city to be an offering; that is, they are fed to the giant. (Of course, you'll need the /summon Giant command to let you spawn a giant, and it'll take some coaxing to get someone to commit suicide at the hands of a giant.)
 * Big Boomer: Build your City out of TNT (apart from light sources. They don't have to be made of TNT) and make the whole population of your city creepers, Ghasts and Blazes. Don't let griefers get it! Make sure you do NOT use redstone or pressure plates anywhere in your city. This will keep you from creating mine cart railways (Except for deep underground or if you're using coal power) and many other buildings, so travel will be limited to pigs, horses, mules, boats, or walking. Glowstone is best for lighting, as torches cannot be placed on TNT. If part of your city accidentally blows up and leaves a massive crater, simply rebuild your city in the crater. To make it possible to have ladders etc. in your city,use bricks for staircases or use more TNT for jump-staircases.Make your city as big as possible quickly, since if it blows up and the game crashes, the city will be saved.


 * Big Rooms: Enclose your city in a big room, so it would be a gargantuan room with four huge rooms inside it, one for Industrial, one for Commercial, one for Residential, and finally one for other stuff. They would then contain smaller rooms, with finally house — sized rooms.


 * Bridge: You can create a nice-sized bridge over a decent-sized river, and then build houses on the bridge and maybe add some stuff on either shore, such as shops, since most of the population of your city will be on the bridge itself. Having a residential zone, industrial zone, commercial zone, etc... will be impossible very difficult due to the layout of the city.


 * Castle: Build a castle in your town and surround the whole city with a big stone wall.
 * Candy is Dandy: Make the entire city out of pink and red wool (placeholders for nonexistent candy blocks), and cake. Make sure people wear red and green leather or candy skins, as part of the dress code. The food shop should sell pumpkin pie, cake, and of course, cookies.
 * City of Gold (or seven!): Make a city entirely of GOLD! Roads of gold blocks and sandstone slabs (placeholder for gold slabs which don't exist) and make constructions like concrete out of gold ore or blocks. You can enhance this city theme by making all 7 cities of gold or an empire. (During the Age of Exploration-the 15th century-there was a legend of 7 cities of gold in Mesoamerica.)


 * City of Green: Make roads out of green wool, buildings out of emerald blocks, and melon. Make sugar cane farms, cactus farms, melon farms, and add lots of lime woolen and green woolen sheep. To really cap it off, make your whole population creepers, zombies (possibly wearing green leather armor) and if you have mods to let you do this, green-robed villagers, or, if on multiplayer, establish a dress code involving green leather or green skins.


 * Cliff: Carve your city out of a cliff, or build it hanging from a mountain overhang.


 * Crafty: Make your city out of different colored wool, iron blocks, diamond blocks, huge mushrooms, and other creative materials. Make the city hall of your city out of the most creative materials you can think of. If you want, you could make a Nether Portal a door for the city hall, and you can make your city hall in the Nether.Be careful in 1.4, as now mobs can travel through portals and make a big mess!


 * Crazy Castle: Same as castle except build the castle asymmetrically and add lots of turrets and spires and towers and bridges and things like that sprouting out of the sides.


 * Cloud city: build your city on a (or multiple) platform(s) made of snow or wool. You can make rooms in the cloud (if up to 5 layers tall), of cloud material, or every house is on a cloud. For the last suggestion, make paths surrounded with iron bars, glass panes, or fences. You can use the Aether mod to make detailed clouds or even in the Aether itself (warning zephyrs) providing already made clouds.


 * Desert Village: Find a desert and put your city in it. Make it out of sandstone and use irrigation to make farms. Also add some acacia trees for palms but if you want palms, make birch wood with jungle leaves. A really nice touch is building it near a desert temple or building a replica or lookalike of a desert temple nearby.


 * Dome City: Build your city completely out of glass domes in the sky. Connect the domes with bridges, and make each house a small dome made out of any material, preferably glass.


 * Egypt: You could build your city like ancient Egypt. To do this, build it in the desert. Make buildings out of sand, sandstone, orange wool in geometric designs, and blue wool as a centerpiece. If you want, find a Desert Temple, unearth it, don't take anything from it, and use it as a central building. Feel free to add tombs, pyramids, the sphinx, and add a gigantic river for the Nile! The Nile is the center of life here as water is scarce, so build your buildings around it. Have Sugarcane Farms and Parchment.


 * Electric City: Use nothing but redstone! Build out of redstone blocks and use iron doors. Also use lots of complicated redstone machines, like doorbells, elevators, and flashing indicator lights. Try using redstone for defense too, like hooking up dispenser machine guns and "spike traps" made by arrows shooting out of the ground.


 * End City: Build your city in the End, and make it out of End Stone and Obsidian. Use ender chests for storage. Make sure to kill the Ender Dragon first or use the mobGriefing game rule. However, this does not prevent damage from the Ender Dragon on survival.


 * Empire: Combine Several Different cities into one gargantuan Empire! It is recommended that you determine the culture of your original conquering nation so you can alter other designs to match. Make sure to take any wanted resources from conquered cities. If you want, add battle damage or wipe entire cities off the map with TNT. Make sure that it looks very militant.


 * Flame City Make a town and set it on fire. Netherrack is good for this purpose. Next, make a well, but fill it with lava. Coat everything in lava or set everything on fire (lava is recommended). Walking is recommended for transportation. Make the population blazes. Possibly, you could also allow players with fire protection armor or ample fire resistance potions to visit from time to time. You can also use Mycelium instead of Grass so it gives a bit more "nether feel".


 * Floating: Make a city on the water. The houses are boats, and the main building is a big flagship.


 * Futuristic Skyscraper All-In-One (AKA The Arcology): Best for any biome, just need place for pillars. Preferred for creative. A massive, costing... and perhaps ugly structure. If you want your inhabitants to feel like being sheltered or compressed together, this is the best solution. It's designed as a heavy skyscraper with many districts and zone scattered trough it. You can build it of any form - Just remember to be futuristic and realistic. It can be a real maze with multiple layers and floating parts or a simple big prism with many corridors. For extra effect, try to make it feel as if a nuclear disaster fell on the world and the ground-level towns are infected by zombies and that the toxic air obliterated the open-air districts. Your "roads" may be accessible by walking, and may be built with glass cover. They can pass through plazas like some kind of highroads. They can give rapid access to certain parts of the skyscraper because it is divided by many areas. You can have some layers, some "zones" restrictions and much more. Remember to have solid, hard pillars made with obsidian or iron blocks to sustain your maze of hallways protuberances. The pieces may be linked together by growing onto sides of roads. Here are examples of layers or "zones" :
 * Level 0 to 4 = Death zone. Only access to the outside. Everything, except authorized military patrols with radiation suits, (Armor of your choice.) will be flagged an infected entity and will be killed.
 * Levels 5 to 22 = Military zones. Access restricted for armed soldiers or highly authorized federal agents, scientists, test subjects or politicians.
 * Levels 23 to 64 = Heavy Industrial zones. Big factories with high polluting. Laboratories. Sewers. Redstone power lines.
 * Levels 65 to 80 = Average to poor zones. Homes for the less fortunate apocalypse survivors. Basic services.
 * Levels 80 to 85 = Luxury zones. Lots of homes for rich people who can afford to live far away from the apocalypse. In order to build this high, you must be on classic flat and have the bottom two levels be built into the ground, OR you can mod your game to let you build higher.


 * Think about a futuristic city built in one huge building with floating parts, all of these linked together. Try combining with Ruins or Steam punk city type for best effect. Note* this doesn't HAVE to have 85 levels, this is just an example.


 * Giant Village: Make an NPC Village or find one and expand it into a sprawling metropolis inhabited by countless Villagers. Bring plenty of Villager Spawn Eggs. Really easy on Superflat.


 *  Gold City:In the middle of the city you can build a statue of Gold. All you really use is Gold, Glowstone for light and Gold Ore for floors or whatever you want. But you would have to do so on creative mode. Just remember it's a GOLD City so it should be mostly made of Gold.


 * Hanging: You could build your city on the roof of a cave. Have "cables" hanging from the ceiling to (supposedly) keep your city from crashing down onto the cave bottom.


 * Hidden Volcano City: Make a volcano with a city hidden inside it. Have a hidden button which causes an entrance to appear. Have a button that you can press to have lava drip down the sides (make sure you have a way to remove and restore it!)


 * Hole/Cliff City: (Note: It's recommended to do it on superflat Tunneler's Dream) Make a deep and 1x1 wide hole to the bedrock, next fill it with the TNT and fuse 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, as there can be dark.


 * Igloo Village: Make a village out of snow. Ice can also be used, but it will melt in light. Make all of the buildings dome-shaped, and place snow golems around the village for protection. This is a very easy village to build and gather resources for, but it is vulnerable to mobs.


 * Invisible City: Make everything in your city made of glass blocks, glass panes, 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 zombies, skeletons, creepers, etc. can spawn in your city unless it is built entirely out of glass.


 * Jungle Tree: Build your city in houses that wrap around the trunks of the tall trees. Use wooden bridges with wooden fences to get from building to building, or use mine carts on wooden bridges to get around the city if you want a more modern look. It can be hard making a path up the trees in survival.


 * Magic City: Make every building in your city have at least 1 brewing stand, 1 cauldron, and 1 enchantment table, and make stores in magic cities only sell potions, potion ingredients, enchantment tables, brewing stands, cauldrons, enchanted armor, bottles o' enchanting, and ender chests. Also, place ender chests instead of regular chests.Use witches for inhabitants on single-player for fun, but they will kill you on survival and also do not have villager AI.


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


 * Medieval: A town with medieval architecture such as lots of cobblestone and/or structures of stone bricks. This place has to have a king, no questions asked, unless of course its ruler is female (in which place there will be a queen.) . Hire trusted players as knights. Suggested amenities include a market as opposed to a line of indoor shops, taverns/inns, a smithy, and other such medieval buildings. DO NOT MAKE SKYSCRAPERS IF YOU ARE DOING THIS!!!


 * 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...


 *  Mineral:  Create your city using only Iron, Redstone, Lapis Lazuli, Gold, Emerald, Diamond, and Quartz Blocks. But you don't have to only use those blocks. Expand a little by using Obsidian, Stone, or some Brown Colored Block like Brown wool, or Jungle wood.


 * 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!


 * Monster Village: Make a village out of bedrock, obsidian, monster-egg and other creepy stuff, with LOTS of monsters. If you have mods, make spawners hidden in "tombs" and have the difficulty on hard. Definitely a creative-mode city to build. Be creative and make stuff like huge haunted houses, mob farms and mob arenas. If you're feeling really creative, you could make a villager prison. You could use /gamerule doDaylightCycle false during the night. (For best results, do on a full moon at midnight.)


 * Multi-Biome City: When you make your city have sections for each biome. Sections could be like snowy, desert, forest, swamp, jungle, savanna, or mesa.


 * Mushroom: Build your city like treetop, except use huge mushrooms instead of jungle trees. Difficult to build, but worth it.

Obviously there should be only 2 farms in a Mushroom village which are Mushroom and mooshroom farms. Just have fun with huge mushrooms.
 * Mushroom village: Make every house a huge mushroom!
 * Native American Village: Make a city of villagers (perhaps with a special texture pack) and, depending on the biome, tepees, igloos(see above), clay huts, dirt huts, etc. Feel free to use Hardened Clay. Use Axes, Bows, and shovels imitating spears for weapons.


 * Nether City: Build your city in the Nether, and make it out of Nether Brick, Soul Sand, and Netherrack.

help you in your construction.
 * Oriental City:Show the Asian side of you and center your domain around Asian culture. Yin-yang here, an oriental-style dragon there and some junk boats in your harbor. Type in "Oriental/Chinese/Japanese (etc., etc.) Building in Minecraft" at whatever search engine you use. There are some pictures to

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 or mob vs player arena. 11+ You Choose!
 * 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. Plus you could try to build it on tiers like this:


 * Planet City: For a cool twist, make spheres somewhere in the sky with a world-editing tool, and then build your buildings on the top! Be sure to only make one building per planet, though, as it's kind of difficult to make multiple buildings on a planet. Bridges or TP Hubs are recommended.


 * Pumpkin Town: Make roads, buildings, and "stairs" out of pumpkins, use jack 'o' lanterns for lighting, and wear pumpkins for helmets. The only farms you can have in a pumpkin city are (obviously) pumpkin farms. Have iron golems and snow golems scattered throughout your city.


 * 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. Any sheep you may have should be dyed rainbow colors as well. Have different sections in your city, like Red Area, Green Area, etc.


 * Robot City: Make a futuristic city out of Iron blocks and fill it with Iron Golems and redstone mechanisms.


 * Ocean Platform: Make your city on the middle of the ocean, you can build it anyway you want, but everything must be on a large platform on the top layer of water, so it looks like it's floating on water. For transportation, you could build a nether portal on the city, build another nether portal on the mainland, and in the nether, build a railroad there to the other portal.


 * Rome: Make a huge city in the image of Rome! Use Lots of quartz, Smooth Sandstone, Paintings, maybe the Romecraft Texture Pack, Iron Golems, and Red blocks for roofing. Add an Arena, Baths, aqueducts, Guard Towers, and city walls.


 * Rough/1984/Dictatorship City: Your city would have a nice, 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. It's 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: Make the ruins of a once great city and add small shelters scattered around the city Keep only the shelters lit and keep the rest of the city dark so that hostile mobs will spawn. Use TNT to put holes in streets and buildings to make it seem like they are falling apart. place chests around town and put weapons and valuable items inside pretend that the players are the only survivors in the city and you must scavenge food to keep your hunger bar up fight off any monsters that assault your base and other things. keep the difficulty set to hard to keep it realistic.


 * 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.


 * 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's flowers all over the place. Make The inside of your Hobbit holes very cozy, but not too elaborate.


 * Sky: 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, or actually build it at cloud level. (Another option is to use some mod that adds actual cloud blocks.)


 * 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. Go through at least one of your "wormholes" into the Nether, 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! Fortunately, Mojang doesn't want to remove it. You can also use minecarts, rails, powered rails, detector rails, cobwebs and command blocks so it can stay night time. You could also get the galacticraft mod and build your city on other planets!


 * Spooky: For a good setting, build your city in the middle of a very large swamp, killing all peaceful mobs and getting rid of cave openings, beaches, or anything that isn't mushrooms, ugly swamp trees, vines, grass, tall grass and water with dirt, sand, and clay. You should use false, and then set the time to night, even better if it happens to be a full moon. Your buildings should be built out of bricks, stone bricks, logs (Dark Oak and spruce are the darkest), cobwebs, mossy cobblestone or anything that you can use to make them look dilapidated. It is even better if you use stairs and slabs to make it all look like broken masonry. The town should not be very big, and buildings ought to be small. There would be several graveyards (with spawners under tombstones if you want), flooded houses, trampled farms, or anything that would make the place look really creepy. You could inhabit it with hostile mobs (preferably overworld; 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 chimneys for smoke.
 *  Stronghold: make a tunneler's dream superflat world, with ONLY strongholds enabled, then use  eyes of ender to find one and enlarge it! have towers coming out of the ground, have plenty of farms of all sorts, just make the rooms out of stone bricks. have hunting parties go out at night and kill monsters! you could also find villages and make stone brick walls around them, then put a tower in the middle so you can go outside and trade. make it feel like a huge disaster happened and armies of the undead roamed the landscape. you can have monster spawners, but only drowning or lava traps — no redstone! (besides potions) no cobwebs,( the place is actually being inhabited)


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


 * Town of Food: Make a city out of food! Build out of melons and pumpkins, and grow sugarcane. Cocoa plants make good stairs, and use jack o lanterns for lighting (they aren't food but they are pumpkins!) Cake can be used for the floor! Easiest in creative mode.


 * Twin Cities: Have two cities next to each other. They could be deadly enemies, or a city where the rich live and one where the poor live.


 * Underground: Build your city in a cave and hang glowstone from the roof for lights.


 * Underground 2:Clear out a huge space underground. Fill it like you would with another city, just all underground. Need lots of lights for this, daylight sensors would work great with Redstone Lamps. If the city is close enough to the surface, make skylights, or whatever they're called made out of glass to let sunlight in.


 * Underwater: Build your city in a giant underwater glass dome. Another way to do this is to build lots of small domes, connected with clean-looking/transparent blocks. (Not recommended for people just starting out building cities.)


 * Underwater 2: create several skyscrapers underwater like you would a normal city, only be sure to keep water from flooding them, Connect them with glass walkways and or tunnels along or beneath the ocean floor. Add lots of large farms for any plant that you can, since you will hurt for resources under the sea. Respiration and aqua affinity enchantments are recommended in survival, for obvious reasons.


 * 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!


 * Vertical: Build a huge tower out of any material you want. Then, use ladders 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 block. 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!


 * 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 flip shader for help.


 * Western: Build a wild west type city in a desert! This is even better if you have a wild west texture pack. If you have mods, you could have an old west railroad using the traincraft mod or even have shootouts using mods with guns. Make a saloon with potions inside, make a bank to keep valuables, have a jail to keep outlaws, and put in other wild west buildings. If you are doing this on a server, you could have someone be a sheriff and other people be outlaws.


 * Herobrine's city: REMEMBER TO MAKE THIS CREEPY! Make buildings out of netherrack, Nether brick and other spooky stuff. Add shrines and dungeons and maybe right in the middle of the city you could add Herobrine castle! Or if you are bad at that, Just make a giant statue of him! The undead are citizens and the sky is always dark, you could do /gamerule doDaylightCycle false when it's night and let the spooky times begin!

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.


 * Cars Using command blocks, you can place Minecarts on normal blocks and drive them like cars with saddled pigs and carrot on a stick.
 * 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 (IE RailCraft or TrainCraft), you can use those instead.

Note: Assuming RailCraft is installed, you can make separate high-speed and low-speed railways to further differentiate a class system in your metropolis.


 * Pigs: After the 12w36a snapshot or above you can control pigs using carrots on a stick, allowing you to have "cars". You could add "gas" stations selling carrots on sticks.


 * Teleporting: With the addition of Command Blocks, you can now create redstone circuits which activate console commands. 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 co-ordinates. You could also have various chests with Ender Pearls inside, although this only works in survival.


 * Walking: The most common way is by walking, so build nice 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.


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


 * Sea Roads: Build a small road across the oceans if your city spreads across a few small islands. Half blocks are recommended here,stone looks nice
 * Horse: In 1.6, horses were added. Build a stable to keep them in.


 * Ships and planes: If you have an plugin such as Ships or similar, you can use commands or special items to move your ship/plane. It will be useful if you build an airport or a port.

Buildings

 * Armor&weapons shop - use the city's currency (eg emeralds nether quartz diamond ) to buy weapons and armor


 * Airport Build an airport and add a runway to "fly" planes off of. If you have a mod or plugin, you can actually make the plane fly! Some interesting things to have in your airport are:


 * Security Checkpoint: Have a long line made with fences leading to a body scanner and an ice conveyer belt where 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 not extremely 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.


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


 * 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.


 * An example of a baggage holding area: BHA for BAM.png


 * Aqueducts: Technically, this isn’t a building, but more a structure. According to Wikipedia article “Aquaducts are bridges for conveying water, called aqueducts or water bridges are constructed to convey watercourses across gaps such as valleys or ravines.” Flat-out there in front of you. But wait there’s more. 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.


 * 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-dispensers for the mob arena and have plenty of temporary weapons for rent in the "arena store" or whatever you want to call it. Be creative.


 * 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 armor in it, as long as weapons and beds are inside for the army.


 * 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 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.


 * 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.


 * 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.


 * Apartments/Hotel 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.


 * Nether Colony Build a small village in the nether to expand your city beyond the realm of the overworld.'''


 * Bakery Make a building with a baker (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 sugarcane farm.

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 combo and put it into a minecart chest along with their items and send 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 done so the player can access their vault. NOTE: This method will take up a lot of space, build it preferably underground (think Gringotts!)
 * 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. 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)


 * Bar Make a store that only sells negative-effect potions, like poison. You can make chairs, brewing stands, and noteblocks or other music generators. This can be combined with the dance floor to make a night club. If you have IndustrialCraft 2 installed, you can instead actually brew beer and rum in the bar.


 * Bookstore/Library Fill a shop with bookshelves. Have a librarian villager work there and have authors write in books and quills to buy/borrow. If the building is a library, fine players for not returning a book on time, or "damaging" it (losing it or destroying it). Have a minecart with chest connected to a minecart train filled with books. Also to make citizens happy, let them write their own books with book and quills.


 * Breeder Make an Industrial Farm and agregele rooms with chickens, pigs, etc., and when necessary, must die.


 * 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 their and sell the meat. You could also have a hunting group to go hunt the meat for the butchers, again just an idea.


 * 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, sugarcane, and wheat harvesting.

front of the cemetery use redstone torches to make some visibility, but scary looking use cobwebs use heads and ash-looking tripwire add roses, and again, redstone torches
 * 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.
 * Casino Have a big fancy building with minecart 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.


 * 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!) to make it look even more original!


 * Cinema/Theater Build a large building with a ticket counter and a hallway leading to the screen rooms.Try to use carpet ( recommended for 1.6 ) and/or wool for the floor. If you have the Web Displays or the ComputerCraft mod installed it would be good for a player starting the films within a certain schedule. 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, his 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 in chests for people to buy/trade. You could arrange by color, arrange it in outfits, or whatever other way you come up with. To look extra authentic, add "models" by luring a skeleton or zombie into a glass case and give it the armor. Make sure that the people who are in your city can't release the monsters!


 * 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!


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


 * Some stores to add would be:


 * Potions shop – A place where you can buy all kinds of potions.


 * Enchantments shop - A place where you pay someone to enchant your tools/weapons/armor.


 * Food market – A place where you can buy any kind of food.


 * Hospital - A place where people go if they have lost hearts and are given "casts" (leather armor) so they don't lose any more hearts. Players are given "medicine" (healing potions) if they have a "virus" (poison or any other bad potions).


 * Furniture Shop - A place that sells furniture like tables, (Pistons), chairs (Stairs), chess tables, showers, and that build in your home!


 * Local shop – Sells everything but junk food (cake or cookies, maybe pie). May also sell tools and armor but probably nothing past iron. (may also have a higher price than specialized shops).


 * Clothes shop – This shop only sells armor in it. Dye leather armor and sell it as "designer" armor! If you are feeling creative, put a zombie or skeleton in a glass case and put armor and clothes on it. If you are in creative mode, you can put a human head on as well to make a realistic model!


 * Supermarket - A place to sell food, snacks, water buckets, etc.


 * Garden shop – this shop will sell flowers, flowerpots, saplings, bone meal, water buckets, dirt/grass blocks, sand, cactus, nether wart, seeds (all), melon, pumpkin, hoes, red and brown mushrooms, lily pad, vines, sugarcane and any other farming resources that exist.

Execution zone- if somebody cheats or griefs then you could have them put on trial and if found guilty,exile them,make them fight in the arena or publicly carry out the death sentence in this place (MAKES THE MOST SENCE IF ITS A DICTATORSHIP OR MEDEVIL)


 * 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.


 * Forge – Charge people to craft a tool or smelt a block.


 * Fountain – An aesthetic addition to any city. Hugely customizable, with many unique designs. Fountains can be used as a centrepiece, on roads, in buildings etc. You can also make a beacon part of it to give players extra strength.


 * Building shop – This shop sells common and exotic building materials such as stone, cobblestone, brick blocks, glass, glass panes, netherbrick blocks, obsidian, wood, wood planks and bookshelves.


 * Junk Food shop - A junk food shop will sell cake, cookies, pie, and burgers (steak + 2 bread). Make sure no healthy food goes in!


 * Redstone outlet - A shop which sells all things redstony. Have some examples of redstone going underground like a piston lift, a piston clock or an automatic farm/cobblestone generator.

""Power Plant"" - a large factory-like building that can be a variety of types .Nuclear - use green wool to simulate uranium and add large exhaust towers with mass smoke generators there. .Hydro - build near a lake and add blocks to simulate power lines. .Fire - use large fires and use wood to fuel them.furnaces would be good too. .Mob - use captured mobs in glass cages as a kind of fuel by either suffocating,physically killing them or dropping gravel/anvils from above. Add fires where the drops will go so that they are a kind of fuel.


 * Pharmacy - A shop with potions (but only good ones) and all foods except cake, cookies, rotten flesh, spider eyes, poisonous potatoes and all raw meats and fish.


 * 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.


 * Music shop- Sell rare music discs and jukeboxes for a high price.

Mines - set up a large underground cavern and pack it with minerals and a transport system to a surface smeltery or refinery.


 * 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,SMP 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).


 * Pet Shop- Here, you can sell wolves and ocelots. 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) 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.


 * 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 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 its 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 and travel through Nether Portal. You could go into the Nether and slay Nether Mobs and the Wither to find the end of the dungeon, and bunker containing a prize and a portal back to the Overworld. Inspired by Take Em All on in Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. An example of a dungeon is:


 * Room 1: 5 Zombies


 * Room 2: 5 Skeletons


 * Room 3: 5 Hostile Wolves


 * Room 4: 3 Creepers


 * Room 5: Mini-boss: Enderman


 * Room 6: 3 Medium slimes


 * Room 7: 1 Large slime


 * Room 8: Mini-boss 2: Spider Jockey


 * Room 9: Resources and Portal


 * Nether Room 1: 5 Zombie Pigmen


 * Nether Room 2: 3 Medium Magma Cubes


 * Nether Room 3: 1 Large Magma Cube


 * Nether Room 4: 3 Blazes


 * Nether Room 5: 3 Wither Skeletons


 * Nether Room 6: Mini-boss 3: Ghast


 * Nether Room 7: Boss: Wither


 * Nether Room 8: Return Portal


 * Prize Room: Reward for finishing is inside of a chest or dispenser, and the exit.


 * Prize Ideas: Nether Star, Swords (Iron to Diamond), Gold Ingots, etc.


 * During a game, no one else can play. Make sure to have mobGriefing turned off, or mobs will destroy the dungeon. Learn more at the Zelda wiki.


 * 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 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.


 * 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, armor enchanted to fire protection, and minecarts ready to move out in maximum speed. Block 51 must die! 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 towns buildings, so when someone presses a fire button, the corresponding torch would turn off. Just an idea. Another way is to have a button in the fire station over the redstone torch that 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.


 * 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, constructed 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, enough is 32. Build 'pumps' where you can get food for your horses, pigs, etc., (transport). 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, and if you have already downloaded the Redstone Update, you can make automatic glass manufacturing with chests, hoppers and furnaces.


 * Greek-style Theatre 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.


 * Hall of crafting create a large building with displays of crafting recipes.


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


 * Harbor Can only be built if your town is near the ocean. 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.


 * 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.


 * Hospital A place to care for injured players. Free beds and healing potions for everybody!Some players had a bad night, so they need some refreshing. Make a BIG house with a red cross on it, and fill it with beds, healing potions, surgery rooms, and that kind of thing. 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 there after a bad episode!

Extra tip: This will likely be the most visited building in your city and therefore you may want to hire security to take care of griefers/troublemakers.


 * Ice Rink Only possible in creative mode, unless you are willing to spend lots of levels trying to get silk touch on a pickaxe. Place ice on the ground inside of a building and skate around on it. Have contests to see who can skate the fastest or spin the longest. Keep fire, glowstone, and light sources far away from the rink, or it will melt!


 * Incinerator build a open fronted chamber and add lava at the top or lit netherrack at the bottom then allow citizens to throw their unwanted items (64 or if greedy 32) at the cost of 1 emerald into it so it can be incinerated. Best placed on highly polluted areas like dumps and manufacturing districts. For some extra realistic ness you could add a chimney with burning netherrack near the top so that smoke comes out.


 * Inn This is best to be built on creative. It needs an elevator, rooms, bathrooms, a lobby, even some misc. rooms. Make sure that you have some chests, furnaces, a fridge, a crafting table, and maybe even other items. Use this for passerby who stay for the night. As an added bonus, you can endorse free passage into the Nether.


 * 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! Bedrock and lava is another great idea!


 * 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.


 * 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 (IE paintball, as mentioned above).


 * Silos 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.


 * Tattoo Shop A place where you can change your skin.


 * Temple Though it may seem similar to a church, it isn't the same thing. You can make a humungous 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, table, lava, bottomless pit, etc. And make sure the temple makes sense; for instance, put a god of shadows underground,and a god of time and space with things such as end stone and other mysterious things. Gather priests and give them cows and pigs to sacrifice.Or if your slightly more brutal and if you have captured players/criminals you could sacrifice them to the gods.


 * Theme Park Have a fun place with minecart roller coasters, a haunted house, and a maze.


 * 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.


 * 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.


 * 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. OR you can have someone be a recorder and download a computer recorder like Bandicam and post these "Shows" on YouTube.


 * 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.


 * Water Treatment Plant Make all of your city's waste and sewers run into it. If you want to be inventive, make it spooky and creepy.


 * 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 mod Forestry installed, you can set up a multifarm as another option.)


 * Zoo Try to get one of each mob in a chamber where players can look at them. Be careful with the hostiles as they might despawn or escape and harm players, and make mini-biomes resembling a mob's home. Be careful if putting hostile mobs on Survival because you might have trouble with spiders.

Government
'The panzerwarall or nothing/ITS EL REVOLUTION /watch ya back'' A cross between crime city and dictatorship.The army will usually go running round killing possible criminals.Plus it's likely that there will be a lot of riots,murders and executions.its 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.Civil war likely and my advice: .grab a good weapon+ armour .fight to the death OR.... . Hide in a backyard shelter!!


 * City/Town Hall Have a huge building for the mayor, his 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 peoples'/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, mods, or even items! The possibilities are endless!


 * House of Representatives / National Embassy This is a building that lets different faction leaders and Operators to 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.

Obviously your city will need a governor and public authorities, as well as a system of government.

Government Systems:


 * Republic: Presidential elections are made. Public authorities are:
 * 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.


 * 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 him into work.
 * Everything is expensive.
 * If a rich player becomes poor, he/she joins the many other poor in the outskirts of the city where he/she is forced into work.
 * Hold banquets everyday.
 * 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 takes the president spot if he leaves the server or is 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 him/herself and takes away the freedom of the public.
 * Slings people that doubt him/her 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/queen (the owner for example)who rules everything
 * Has an army under his/her control
 * Lives in an enormous palace
 * Has a private chef
 * Is very rich
 * Is the commander of the army


 * Communist: A good policy if your city is already rich with nearly-infinite resources
 * People work NOT for them selves, 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 his abilities, to each according to his 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: Leninism, Marxism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, etc.


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


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


 * "Winner takes all": Whoever kills the king is the king
 * Causes complete anarchy
 * Can be quite fun
 * Leads to totally different governing styles over short periods of time
 * Lots of people will be trying to hire assasins or even kill the king themselves, so be careful if you are the ruler!


 * "Netherworld Style": A similar 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).
 * Inspired by the structure for the Corrupternment from Disgaea 4.


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


 * Easy System: Possibly one of the best systems out there
 * There is only one higher power, a mayor/king/emperor or whatever
 * 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 etc.
 * The mayor/king/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 MANY DIAMONDS YOU HAVE.
 * People build their own houses rather than having diamond less people build them for them so that cobblestone/wooden planks they've obtained have an actual purpose


 * High Life: The rich have it good; The poor... not so much
 * People with more than a certain amount of money (like d≥5 diamonds, for example) live in a palace, don't work
 * The poor are slaves, forced to work in mines or other dirty jobs, and are 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.
 * Warning: This is a really bad system unless you want people to hate you

End of Minecraft: same as anarchy but a few tweaks
 * 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.
 * griefing is not allowed
 * keep all hostile mobs away from the city
 * recommended for post-apocalyptic cities
 * every man for his/her self unless a major event(IE.mob raids,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 king, he/she rules everything.
 * There are 9 to any number of lords that rule smaller sections.
 * Each of the lord areas are 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/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 (i.e., 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 he/she wants to build something
 * Only one ruler
 * There is no admin or mod ranks, just owner, president and citizen
 * 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


 * 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
Any ideas that don't fit into the other categories

'WMD lab' if you have nuclear war/bacteria mods then you can use this as a breeding ground or assembley base.make a big,multi level building and 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 and security is likely to be tight.


 * 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.


 * 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 on 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.


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


 * 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 nice sitting area for the parents to relax!
 * Fireworks Show Use a bunch of redstone, dispensers, and different types of fireworks to make a special firework show!


 * 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.


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


 * 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!


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


 * Games Build an area where players can play games like:


 * 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.
 * 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 pork chop on them. If the player fails, they push a button that opens a pit below them, leading to their death.
 * Wolf-run!: A game where there are wolves. Hit and run and see who can survive the longest. 2+ players.
 * Graveyard: A Graveyard with spawners under graves. Hide chests with armor and weapons. 4+ Players.
 * 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!
 * Spleef: Make a large, flat-topped arena(dirt) and have two teams try to dig under other! Last standing wins!
 * Drop Party: Players are put in a room while the admin drops items like pistons and sugar and lava and nether portal blocks (Random stuff) these can be taken home later.
 * 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 and make a big fence around the perimeter. turn off PvP, and mobgriefing so that creepers dont blow the plain or desert to nothing, and turn the contestants to adventure mode so they can break the spawners. at evening, put 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 coloured 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 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.
 * Grand Theft Egg!: Put an Enderdragon 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.
 * 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 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.
 * 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 light. Maybe a hedge maze is of 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.
 * 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 brick, with gravel roads and cobblestone stairs.
 * 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 ocelots for an extra challenge.
 * Abeggtion: 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.
 * 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 them try to find the one item/block).
 * 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 tinted leather armor, and as your football 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.


 *  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 player, and challenges. Build TNT cannons and build an army. Award loyal soldiers with positions like the 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.


 *  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.

Torture labryinth use the general maze building idea but only add lethal traps and dangerous mobs. Add viewing windows and throw armoured and armed guards at each exit and window.Only throw criminals+greifers in.Make the walls as strong as possible. 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 1: reprieve them OR 2: use leads to hang them above a cactus so they die.


 * Nether Access Build a 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 nice nether-style building around the portal so people can easily see where it is. Cannot be made in End or Nether cities, consider "Overworld Access" there.


 * 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!


 * 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!


 * 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 death of your enemies. Just be creative!


 * 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 5-6 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.


 * National Park Close off an area of your metropolis and leave it how it is, with forests, caves, NPC Villages, plains, deserts, taigas, tundras, oceans, rivers, temples, abandoned mineshafts, strongholds, dungeons, jungles, etc. Make a Leave No Trace rule here (e.g., 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.


 * 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.


 * 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 1 at a time, and heal them between rounds.


 * 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.


 * Building Contests Hold a contest to build... really anything. Flying machines, houses, etc. Include various prizes, such as rare blocks, and make sure to have a couple judges (at least two recommended). After it's over, winners' entries stay up (and, if you have WorldEdit, you can even move them somewhere else), while the losers' entries can be taken down.


 * 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!


 * 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.


 * 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 left click.


 * 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.

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, a great currency 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.

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 be ran without stopping.

Roads also tend not to be steep, in real life, anything over 1/2 block up or down for ever 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.


 * Dirt/sand/terrain path:
 * Recommended material: Dirt or Sand (or Podzol as of 1.7)
 * Should wind around any obstacle, even small trees.
 * Should be 1-3 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 2-3 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 2-3 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 3-7 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 3-7 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 3-11 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 15-23 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-travelling land-vehicle made by the society building it. No bridge type or tunnel is too expensive or extravagant for something like this.

Specialty Roads

 * BOOM! Road:
 * Recommended material: TNT
 * Make a road similar to the musical road(a little down) but instead of note blocks, use TNT under the plates! More like a military mine field.

"The tube" 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.


 * Clay Road:
 * Recommended material: Clay or Hardened Clay
 * 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 5-7 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, is good for rural areas, and works 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 you can ride along the road and listen to music at the same time!


 * Netherbrick Road:
 * Recommended material: Netherbrick, Netherrack, Glowstone
 * Create a 5 block wide road of Netherbrick, leaving holes 2 blocks long and separated by one block of Netherbrick 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.


 * 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.

Freeways
(Warning! Don't build this if you don't know how to!)

A Freeway is a road with signs and exits. Add locations like:


 * Mineland


 * John's town


 * Or even, near a village

No freeway is complete without number shield. A number shield is a number like M90 or H3 is a number shield. Some are national routes. However, typing a national route is very time and space consuming. Don't forget to add some bridges! Add tolls as well so players can pay for e-tags (1 diamond) and day passes! Cost for e-tag: 10 emeralds Cost for day pass: 2 emeralds Don't forget to add for poles and you look out for any speeding players to fine them! Fine: 50 emeralds Don't forget to fine players without e-tag or day pass! Fine: 70 emeralds Don't forget to put them into jail when they don't have enough! Alternatively, "smash" (or kill) their "car" (or pig)! A good old fashioned griefer's trick is to add TNT traps under toll posts!

General Block Palette
It is often strongly advised that, for a specific type of construction, you stick to a specific palette of block-types. For example, Stone-brick Roofs, brick, birch-plank and/or spruce-plank walls, nether brick details like window-boxing, a lot of jungle leaves. This helps other builders, and yourself, to make creations that "fit" together, instead of a random mix. (It also helps the build stay consistent!)

Jobs
Job Search Center: A place that helps those new to the server to find work.

After you have built your city, every citizen should have work: 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 Centre. any unused bits can be incinerated.

Lab workers : experiment on test subjects in the labs.If subjects die during testing call in body disposal units.use healing potions as mutch as possible on the subjects.

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 THEYRE TRUSTED or the drops may end up on the black market or get sold to another city to help their arms production.


 * Golem producer: produces AUXILIARY iron golems and snow golems for either the Army or police force salary depends on size of contract


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


 * Actor/Actress: Works in television shows and plays. Salary: Depends on job


 * 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


 * 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 ( ?) BEWARE THEY COULD DOUBLE-CROSS YOU.


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


 * Banker: Works with player's money in vaults. MAKE SURE THEY ARE TRUSTED, OR YOU COULD LOSE LOTS OF MONEY! Salary: (?)


 * Bar Tender: Serves drinks to players at a bar. Salary: 8$ Emeralds.


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


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


 * 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.


 * Cashier: The cashier of a store. Salary: 10$ Emeralds.


 * Job Center Employee: Report offers available jobs, scheduling interviews, job offers add more to the list, etc. Salary: 19$ Emeralds


 * Job Center Director: Manages the Job Search Center. Salary: 90$ Emeralds.


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


 * Factory Worker: Someone who works in a factory (above). Salary: 12$ Emeralds


 * Redstone Technician: Someone who builds many mechanisms with redstone. Salary: 20$ Emeralds.


 * Repair: Someone who repairs weapons and tools. (Charges by Weapon)


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


 * Cook: Someone in a restaurant kitchen. Salary: 15$ Emeralds


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


 * Condo Chief: A person who owns a building, and receives the rent. Salary: (?)


 * Professor: Someone to teach techniques in mining, construction, redstone, etc. Salary: 30$ Emeralds.


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


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


 * Soldier: Soldiers to defend the city from monsters. Salary: 9$ Emeralds.


 * Demolitionist: Someone who destroys unwanted buildings. This is definitely a job for people who like to destroy things! (NEVER use TNT for this job!) The salary depends on the size of the job.


 * Farmer: Raises crops and farm animals, and sells to villagers or store owners. Salary: (?)


 * Mayor: Governs usually 1/4 or 1/2 of the city, receives much salary, and lives in Big Houses. Salary: 100$


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


 * President: Normally the ruler in his city. Doesn't necessarily have to be an administrator, and can even be the person who runs the server. Salary: (?)


 * Pork Salesman: Sells Pigs and Carrots on a Stick for all your transportation needs. Saddles included, of course. Salary: 13$ Emeralds.


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


 * Police Officer K-9: just a police officer except they work with there dogs note: requires your dog salary: 40$ Emeralds


 * Bodyguard: Hire people to be your bodyguards. Make sure you can trust them. Salary: 40$ 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.


 * 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.


 * High Miner: Mines only above layer 31. Salary: 7$ Emeralds.


 * Low Miner: Mines only below layer 32. Salary: 9$ Emeralds.


 * Grocery Owner/Worker: Works at the Grocery Store. Salary: (?)


 * Toy maker: Would make levers, buy string to sell it, make mini minecraft toys made out of sticks, wool and diamond. (?)


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


 * Wholesale dealer: Buys items and sells them to stores buy stack or chest. Salary (?)


 * Snow Remover: uses shovels to clear snow off of roads. Mainly used in taigas or tundras. Salary: varies by size of road and amount of snow.

Salary: Depends.
 * Executioner/Torturer: Tortures Griefers and other criminals in an area where breaking blocks quickly is impossible (Bedrock or Obsidian) with swords, fishing rods and other methods. On hardcore city servers, they can kill heavy criminals publicly (probably with sneaking to hide name so terrorists can't revenge on them) with all kinds of methods too. Let them burn criminals on netherrack fire! Threat to blow up criminals with creepers! Push criminals into an arena full of gladiators! Hang their heads in public!!!!!!


 * 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 job


 * Hired Killer: Not very legal. Hire them with diamonds to make them kill political enemies or terrorists! you can also hire them to do in mobs that got their hands on your protection IV diamond armor and sharpness V bow. they get the XP from mobs and targets and you get the XP from item recuse missions. their salary: Depends.


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


 * TV Broadcaster: Puts videos of the TV shows that the actors and actresses put on. Salary: 40$ Emeralds


 * Gladiator: battles mobs or other players in the arena salary 40 emeralds


 * Smelter: Someone who is paid to smelt materials. Salary: depends on Amount smelted.

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.


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

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!

Note: The Salary is every 3 Days.

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 (e.g., as long as they brought their own beds / sleeping bags, there are enough chairs at the tables, etc., to support them).

House types
There are many types of houses

Minecrafter House
These houses are wooden style, and simple to make in survival, capturing the essence of a Minecrafter more. They look like the NPC village Building

Realistic House
Use blocks like stained clay and bricks to make a house that looks like a house in real life. You could even add complicated furniture!

Home-Shop: A shop on the other floors above inhabits the owner. Cost: 60$ Emeralds.

Hotel: 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. Cost: 0$ Emeralds.

Custom House: Be Creative! Wooden planks grip and start building, give an empty lot to a person who can get along. Cost: 20$ Emeralds.

Shack or hut: a small structure meant to barely / almost accommodate the basic needs of one dead-broke family or individual. NPC-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 make from wood, and are usually single-story structures that aren't very large. Cost: 9$ Emeralds.

Minecrafter House 2: 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. Cost: 15$ Emeralds.

Minecrafter House: A two-story house with a porch, automatic parking of pigs, as L. It has a guest room and all the basics. Cost: 20$ Emeralds.

Pied-a-terre for poor: A place of 5X5. Far from the city, made ​​of wood, and square, studio style. You can add a bathroom. Cost: 10$ Emeralds.

Pied-a-terre small: the same as a pied-a-terre of poor, only with second floor. Cost: 19$ Emeralds.

Small Shed: An ideal home for the rural area of 5X9. Very humble. Includes Basement. Usually this consists of: 1 Bedroom, 1 Kitchen, Basement Cellar, 1 Corral Pig, and a Mini-crop field Cost: 19$ Emeralds.

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. Cost: 29$ Emeralds.

Shed 3 story: As the name implies, with another barn. Cost: 40$ Emeralds.

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. Cost: 45$ Emeralds.

Pied-a-terre Normal: a rectangular space with bedroom and living-kitchen Cost: 20$ Emeralds.

Pied-a-terre big: L-shaped house with bathroom, mini-kitchen and living room. You can have a fireplace. Cost: 37$ Emeralds.

Pied-a-terre Cozy Large: A pied-a-terre in the form of L, 2 story, Fireplace, 2 Balconies, Carpet, dog door, special lamp, living room, large kitchen, 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and a library. Here lives the middle class. Cost: 50$ Emeralds.

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. Cost: 50$ Emeralds.

Minecrafter Mansion: A big house, fireplace, living room, 3-5 bedrooms, 2-4 bathrooms, 1 Kitchen, Crafting, Bodega, Mine Private, large garden, etc. Also two towers. Normally 3 Floors, with a quarter of stairs, also an automatic parking of Pigs or horses. Cost: 110$ Emeralds.

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. Cost: 39$ Emeralds.

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 Cost: 50$ Emeralds.

Minecrafters building types:

Departments A: A 3-story building in a shape of two L's stuck together, with a mini plaza. Each department is approximately 5X6, with all the basics, chests, beds, mini-kitchen. Cost: 20$ Emeralds. (Every one)

Departments B: A 4-story building in L shape, with two apartments on each floor. Each department is 12X10, with all the basics and a mini-dining. Cost: 25$

Departments C: A 9-story square building, with one apartment on each floor of 9X6. All the basics and Balcony. Cost: 23$ Emeralds.

Departments D: A rectangular building of 6 floors with one apartment on each floor. Each department is 19X9, all the basics and Balcony. There is a mini plaza below. Cost: 32$ Emeralds.

Departments E: A square building 10 floors, with 2 or 4 apartments on each floor. Each department measures 10X12 and includes all the basics plus a library-office. Cost: 28$ Emeralds.

Departments F: Rectangular building 8 floors and 2 apartments on each floor. Each department measures 8x8 and has all the basics and Balcony. Cost: 19$ Emeralds.

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 looooong time!) make them out of lighter materials, and add dashes of color if necessary. The floor looks awesome with cyan wool (Cyan carpet in 1.6) 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.Cost: 70$ Emeralds.

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. Cost: 39$ Emeralds

Duplex: A two-story house, separated. Each apartment can accommodate 2 people. In short, a two-story mini. 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. Cost: 28$ Emeralds

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. Cost: 39$ Emeralds.

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. As Suburban house but more like 120–240 meters ^2 area. And only poor to just above average residents. Cost: 29$ Emeralds.

Slum apartment: Never over 60 meters^2 area (external, 45 internal), always single-story. Terrible living conditions, cramped, little to no decoration that isn't purely sentimental. 1-3 rooms, 0-1 bathrooms, 1 bedroom. Only the poor live here. Cost: 2$ Emeralds

Average apartment: Apartment with 1-2 bedrooms, 1-2 bathrooms, a kitchen, and at least one other room. Typically 80-150 meter^2 exterior. Cost: 30$ Emeralds.

Penthouse apartment: Singular or nearly singular nice apartment on the top floor of a high-rise building. Easily over 200 meter^2 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 a millionaire. At least. Cost: 99$ Emeralds.

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 2-3 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. Cost: 99$ Emeralds.

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 m^2. Only used by nobles, the extreme-rich, and those given them as gifts by kings, politicians, celebrities, etc. Cost: 119$ Emeralds.

Millionaire Tower: a gigantic tower in the city center, about 50 floors, with departments. Beautiful decoration for celebrities, presidents, mayors, governors, a large park, almost impossible to build in survival. A large patio, roof made ​​of emerald blocks, glass walls.

Departments in the building are recommended to be around 19x19, and the apartments should probably have a couple bedrooms, an office, a kitchen, and a bathroom or two. Cost: 79$ Emeralds.

Suites, if you make any, can have multiple bedrooms (3 or more), a large kitchen, a dining room, an office, a balcony (either hanging out the side or hanging over an indoor plaza of some sorts), a jacuzzi, and a couple bathrooms. Cost: 90$ Emeralds.

Larger or Presidential Suites can have all the features of a standard Suite, a private pool if you're ambitious enough, a guest room, a bar, and generally just very expensive and luxurious. Cost: 100$ Emeralds.

As one more option, you can also add a Mega Suite at the very top — two floors, maximum security, sparing no expense. Somewhere where only some billionaire or major figure would be able to stay. Cost: 290$ Emeralds.

Hotel House Can be used for extremely rich Minecraftians, who need to spend their large amounts of Gold, Emerald, and Diamonds. Cost: 140$ Emeralds.

Presidential House: A Giant House 3 Floors, of 62X72, much more than is necessary to survive. You can make Quartz or any other material. (I do not recommend diamond, is overly flashy) With windows that go from floor to ceiling, etc. Cost: Free to the President.

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.

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 and come out with a really boring city, or you can ignore everything and still build the best city Minecraft has ever seen! It's your call, so get building!