Future City Competition

Future City is a project-based learning program where students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades imagine, research, design, and build cities of the future. Keeping the engineering design process and project management front and center, students work in teams to ask and answer an authentic, real-world question: How can we make the world a better place?

Students involved in the Future City Competition spend approximately four months creating cities that could exist at least 100 years in the future. Each city must incorporate a solution to a design challenge that changes each year. This year’s challenge, Clean Water: Tap Into Tomorrow, asks participants to identify a threat to their future city’s water supply and design a resilient system to ensure a reliable supply of clean drinking water. In January, students will present their cities to judges at Regional Competitions throughout the United States, Canada, China, and Egypt. Teams that win their regional competition in the US receive airfare and hotel accommodations for five members of their team to attend the Finals held in Washington, DC, in February.