Award-Winning Future City Competition Announces Theme for 2023-24:
Electrify Your City
Annual International Competition asks
Middle School Students to design a 100% electric city one-hundred years in the future.
ALEXANDRIA, VA, May 2023 –Every day we plug in and power up, thanks to electricity. Electricity is essential for heating, cooling, and ventilation. There is a growing consensus that future cities could be powered completely by electricity.
This year’s Future City® Competition challenges middle school students to explore: 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? And to imagine what future cities will be like when engineers find and implement solutions to the challenge of electrifying our cities.
With a challenge to Electrify Your Future, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students will research, imagine, and design future cities that are fully electric and powered by energy sources designed to keep their citizens and the environment healthy and safe.
Working as a team with an educator and STEM mentor, students present their vision of the future through a 1,500 word city essay; a scale model of their city (built with recycled materials); a project plan to help keep their project on track; and in a short presentation to a panel of STEM professionals. Keeping the engineering design process and project management front and center, students are asked to address an authentic, real-world question: How can we make the world a better place?
Each year, over 60,000 students, representing 1,800 schools and 38 regions in the US, take part in the Future City® Competition. Teams present their ideas at Regional Competitions in January. US regional winners then face off at the Future City Finals, where they are joined by a growing roster of international teams, including those from Canada and China. Taking place in Washington DC, February 16-19, 2024, during Engineers Week, the exciting competition culminates with one team taking home the grand prize including $7,500 for their school’s STEM program (provided by Finals sponsor Bentley Systems) and a STEM experience.
The deadline to register for this year’s Future City® Competition is October 31, 2023. To register or learn more visit futurecity.org. Follow us on our Facebook page for more information and updates on the Future City® Competition.
Future City has ongoing opportunities for engineering and technical professionals to volunteer in a number of different roles, including team mentors and regional coordinators. For more information about Future City and volunteer opportunities, visit www.futurecity.org.
Major funding for DiscoverE’s Future City Competition comes from the Bechtel Corporation, Bentley Systems Inc., NCEES, PMIEF, and the Overdeck Family Foundation. Additional program support is provided by Linde Engineering, Pentair Foundation, and Shell Energy.
The Future City competition is a program of Discover Engineering, based in Alexandria, VA. DiscoverE is a nonprofit organization comprised of professionals from a coalition of nationwide engineering, science and technological corporations and professional societies. Some of DiscoverE’s other endeavors include Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day™ (February 23, 2023), World Engineering Day (March 4, 2023), the Persist Series, Chats with Changemakers, and outreach for the Dream Big film.
For more information on the Future City Competition visit: FutureCity.org or Future City Press Kit
Contacts: Kathy Renzetti, CAE, Executive Director, kathy@DiscoverE.org , 571-467-0354; or Thea Sahr, Deputy Executive Director, thea@DiscoverE.org , 571-467-0356