Middle schoolers dream up cities of the future

RALEIGH -- Hawk City is one cool place to live.

"There's no such thing as gas in our city," said Sha'Deja Bracey, one of its designers. "There's no such thing as trash in our city."

Her colleague, Derek Kamberg, piped up: "We recycle everything."

These dreamers are from Northridge Middle School in Charlotte, one of 10 school teams in the regional Future City Competition on Saturday at N.C. State University's College of Engineering.

The contest pairs professional engineer mentors with middle school students who build models of utopian cities. The idea is to foster technological literacy, while getting students jazzed about engineering.

The seventh and eighth graders are the engineers of 2020, said Louis Martin-Vega, NCSU's dean of engineering.

"We really strive to make the 'e' in engineering mean excitement," Martin-Vega said. "This is a great example of that. You can see how turned on they are."

About 30,000 students from more than 1,000 schools are participating nationally. Nine of the 10 schools competing in Raleigh on Saturday were from North Carolina, including Ligon GT Magnet Middle School in Raleigh, A.L. Stanback Middle School in Hillsborough and West Cary Middle School.

Saturday's winning team, Davidson IB Middle School in Davidson, will go on to compete in the national final next month in Washington during National Engineers Week. The team also won $1,000 and a week at NCSU's engineering summer camp.

This year, students were asked to incorporate nanotechnology -- the fabrication of devices with parts on a molecular scale -- to monitor the cities and keep them healthy.

The tabletop Hawk City, named for the Northridge school mascot, was a maze of futuristic doodads that had all kinds of practical uses. Little cups on building roofs were meant to capture rainwater. There were nano sensors, windmills and buildings with energy-saving coatings. For fun, there was an amusement park.

"And we have free health care," said Kristen Wilhoit, picking up a milk carton turned hospital.

Harnessing girl power

About half of the budding urban designers were girls. The competition helps to shatter the stereotype that engineering isn't for female students, said Pam Townsend, a competition organizer and head of the Raleigh engineering firm Earth Tech.

It was an encouraging sign to Martin-Vega, who said NCSU's engineering college is about 20 percent female. "We'd love to see this transcend to where half of our engineers are women," he said.

The competition's fourth place winning team, West Cary Middle School, had planned for natural disasters in its island city. The city had two levels -- one above ground and one underwater. Water current provided power, and a tunnel transportation system was fashioned with drinking straws. Above-ground towers featured elevators that could transport residents to a safety chamber below. An early-warning system would notify the population of a coming hurricane or tsunami.

Richard Yim, a seventh grader, pointed out a cluster of little buildings that dotted the land level. Perhaps reflecting their experience in Wake County schools, Yim and his teammates had prepared for everything.

"We have plenty of schools," he said. "We have more than enough schools so it won't get overflowed with students."