Future City Engineering

​FUTURE CITY ENGINEERING INFORMATION

What Is Future City Engineering?

Future City starts with a question—how can we make the world a better place? To answer it, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students imagine, research, design, and build cities of the future that showcase their solution to a citywide sustainability issue. Past topics include stormwater management, urban agriculture, public spaces, and green energy. 

This year’s theme:

Electrify Your Future

Design a 100% electrically powered city with energy generated from sources that keep their citizens and the environment healthy and safe.

Participants complete five deliverables: a 1,500-word city essay; a scale model (or multiple model segments) built from recycled materials; a project plan, a presentation, and a Q&A session with judges. Regional winners represent their region at the international Finals. After completing Future City, student participants are not only prepared to be citizens of today’s complex and technical world, but also poised to become the drivers of tomorrow.

Engineering and so much more

This flexible, cross-curricular educational program gives students an opportunity to do the things that engineers do—identify problems; brainstorm ideas; design solutions; test, retest and build; and share their results. This process is called the engineering design process. With this at its center, Future City is an engaging way to build students’ 21st century skills. Students participating in Future City:

• Apply math and science concepts to real-world issues

• Develop writing, public speaking, problem solving, and time management skills

• Research and propose solutions to engineering challenges

• Discover different types of engineering and explore careers options

• Learn how their communities work and become better citizens

• Develop strong time management and project management skills

Overview: Electrify Your Future 

Every day we plug in and power up, thanks to electricity. Electricity is essential for heating, cooling, and ventilation. With each day comes new demands on our electrical grid: more electric cars on the road, more buildings switching to electric heat pumps, and more industries electrifying manufacturing processes formerly powered by combustion engines running on fossil fuels. 

Today most electricity is generated by large power plants, with over 60% in 2022 from fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. Burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and China. These emissions cause global warming, which in turn causes climate change. As the world works to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change, we need to change how we generate electric power. 

There is a growing consensus that future cities could be powered completely by electricity. What clean, green, and renewable energy sources could power the electrical grid? How would these sources generate enough electricity for industry, transportation, agriculture, residential, and commercial uses? 

Today’s engineers, scientists, architects, and city leaders are working together to make our cities run on electricity created from energy with minimal environmental impact. 

Can you imagine what future cities will be like when engineers find and implement solutions to the challenge of electrifying our cities? 

The students’ challenge: Design a 100% electrically powered city with energy generated from sources that keep your citizens and the environment healthy and safe.

There will be a Future City Engineering Info meeting in September (Date TBA) for all parents interested in hearing about this awesome activity for middle school students this year!  Watch this website and the principal's newsletter for more information about the date and location for this meeting

Interested students will meet with Mrs. Reese at WRMS during Wildcat Time in September (date TBA) to learn about this program.  If the student is interested, s/he will be asked to complete a form which will need to be signed by a parent.