New Jersey Middle Schools Compete in “Future City Competition”

On January 17th, over 70 middle school teams presented their version of “Feeding Future Cities” to a panel of judges at a competition that took place at Rutgers University Livingston Campus Center called Future City Competition. New Jersey Farm to School Network was honored to attend and witness the ingenuity and scope of work for everyone involved in this competition.

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 and present their ideas before judges at Regional Competitions in January. Regional winners travel to National Finals in Washington, DC in February.

The Challenge: Choose two foods (one vegetable and one protein) and design a way to grow enough of each within your future city borders to feed all of your citizens for at least one growing season. Taking into account your city’s size and location, you must consider the critical elements needed to grow food including light, climate, air quality, space, water, soil, and nutrients.

During the Future City Competition, students work as a team to design a virtual city using SimCity™ software. They research a city wide issue (which for this year’s competition was “Feeding Future Cities”) and write an essay with their findings and solutions. They build a tabletop scale model of their city using recycled materials costing no more than $100 and they write a brief narrative promoting their city.

The competition is made up of five components. Teams are judged and scored on each one. The Virtual City Design, Research Essay, and City Narrative are all due before the Regional Competition. The Model and Team Presentation are judged at the Regional Competition which in New Jersey took place on January 17th. Scores from all five components were added together to determine the top team.

AND THE WINNERS ARE!

  • 1st: Marepolis from Heritage Middle School (Livingston) with students Tina Li, Helen Yang, and Catherine Zhang
  • 2nd: Gooa Heilsu from St. Paul Interparochial School (Ramsey) with students Kevin Moclair, Owen Mitsinikos, Francesca Daszak, and Joseph Calianese
  • 3rd: Ville De Saine from Valley View Middle School (Watchung) with students Annika Schmidt, Isabel Vala, and Jacqueline Lee

CONGRATS TO EVERYONE WHO PARTICIPATED!! Check out more pictures from the competition here.