What is Future City?
At the start of each school year, 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, and green energy. The 2023-2024 topic is Electrify Your Future.
Students present their solutions via a virtual city design (using SimCity), a 1,500-word city essay, a scale model, a project plan, and a presentation to judges at regional competitions in January. Regional winners represent their region at the National Finals in Washington, DC in February. After the competition is over, student participants are not only prepared to be citizens of today’s complex and technical world, they are poised to become the drivers of tomorrow.
In New Jersey, Future City has brought together the education community, local engineering alumni, engineering firms and various professional societies. In recent years the NJ region competition has grown to over 500 participating students, teachers, and mentors. Feedback from both students and teachers has been exceedingly positive, with exclamations of an excellent engineering experience!
For more information about the competition, including how to participate, please visit https://futurecity.org/ or click to view the latest press release and NJ-specific flyer.
Consider Becoming A Mentor!
Each student team needs a mentor. Mentors volunteer directly with students and share real-life STEM experiences, offer technical guidance, and help translate academic concepts to the real world of engineering and city design. In general, mentors interact with their teams in person, via email, or even via Skype. Interested? Check out this flyer on becoming a mentor!
Not able to be a mentor but still want to volunteer? Consider becoming a judge, day-of-competition volunteer, exhibitor, or sponsor. For more information on these opportunities, please visit https://futurecity.org/future-city-regions/new-jersey/ and use the contact information at the bottom of the page to get started. Or, click to view the flyer.
Sponsorship
No matter how much time and effort you’re willing and/or able to give, please consider becoming a sponsor. There are different levels of sponsorship available - click below to view the sponsorship form.