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Today is a big day for young, would-be city planners from all over Michigan.
The Michigan Regional Future City Competition, which takes place at the Rock Financial Showplace in Novi, will involve than more than 1,200 students from throughout Michigan, including kids from a record 20 schools in the City of Detroit.
The Future City Competition challenges students to design a city of the future - and have fun doing it. The program, sponsored and coordinated locally by the Engineering Society of Detroit, was designed to promote technological literacy and engineering to seventh and eighth grade students.
The process involves the following:
- Working as team under the guidance of an engineer mentor and a teacher.
- Developing a project plan to guide team activities.
- Using SimCity software to design their cities.
- Demonstrate writing skills through a 300–500-word abstract explaining their city design and a 500–700 word essay.
- Building a city model using recycled materials.
- Enhancing communications skills through the creation of a team presentation.
Joshua Meriweather, a teacher who leads the Future City team at Detroit’s Golightly Academy in Detroit, said he understood the appeal and benefits of the program right away.
“I heard that you would play a video game, build a city and go to a competition with that,” he said, and knew his students would be drawn to it. And they have – to tune of more than 100 hours spent designing their city and more time spent on the essays, model building and other aspects of the competition.
Meriweather said his school is new to the competition, so he’s not sure how well they will do in today’s judging, but added that he and his team have learned a lot. He plans to have this year’s participants train the seventh-graders who will compete next year – thus creating another learning and team-building opportunity for the students.
Meriweather’s students, like all the teams, designed a city around this year’s theme: “Keeping Our City's Infrastructure Healthy: Using Nanotechnology to Monitor City Structures and Systems.”
The Golightly students designed an urban community with lots of waterfront property that got most its power from such things as fusion and wind energy. To keep pollution low and enhance the quality of life for residents, the city also includes a good mass transit network, walkable neighborhoods and amenities such as parks, monuments, a science center and a baseball stadium.
Funding for the competition was provided by the Skillman Foundation, the Ford Motor Co. Fund and the DTE Energy Foundation, as well as by numerous companies and individuals.
Today’s competition begins at about 7:30 a.m. Judging will be taking place all day with the results portion starting around 2 p.m. For more about the Future City competition, click here. |
