Mapping for One-Place Studies - a forum

Minecraft enthusiasts can recreate virtual versions of their home towns by combining publicly-available open data with a new tool developed by a web specialist at the University of Southampton.

Christopher Gutteridge, developed a software tool that when you put the data from OpenStreetMap and LIDAR into Minecraft you can automatically create a lifelike model of any place in England within a very short time. By giving the software a region to generate it goes to the LIDAR site to work out the shapes of things, and to OpenStreetMap to work out what is a building, grass, roads or water.

Another article is titled Mind Craft - "Microsoft’s popular video game Minecraft helps kids learn everything from programming, science and math to art, languages and history."