FUTURE CITY COMPETITION

The North Texas Section is a proud sponsor of the Future City Competition held annually at the University of Texas at Arlington’s Nedderman Hall. WEAT-NTS sponsors a $300 award for the annual Excellence in Application of Water Recycling category.

The Future City Competition is a national, project-based learning experience where students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade imagine, design, and build cities of the future. Students work as a team with an educator and engineer mentor to plan cities using SimCity™ software, research and write solutions to an engineering problem, build tabletop scale models with recycled materials, and present their ideas before judges at Regional Competitions in January. Regional winners represent their region at the National Finals in Washington, D.C., in February.
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 career options
• Learn how their communities work and become better citizens