Huntsville AEE Supports Alabama Regional Future Cities Competition

Alabama participation in Future City, the national competition for middle school students to design a City of Tomorrow, has grown each year for five consecutive years.  That’s also how many years the Huntsville AEE chapter has supported the regional competition.

The January 14 Alabama Regional Future City competition saw teams from 33 schools compete at the Davidson Center of Huntsville’s U.S. Space and Rocket Center. They joined more than 40,000 middle school students from 1,350 schools in 38 regions around the U.S.

Again this year, the overall Alabama State Future City winner was Huntsville City Academy for Science and Foreign Language (ASFL) for their entry “Mauri.” Ms. Angela Traylor is the Teacher Lead. The winner of the AEE Energy Efficiency Award was Denton Magnet School in Mobile, AL, whose Teacher Lead is Ms. Amanda Shaw. Their Future City model name was “Peregrine City.” 

“Our Huntsville AEE chapter was proud to again support this important mentoring experience for our young  ‘engineers to be’ with sponsorship and personal involvement.  The Chapter provided corporate level monetary sponsorship to support the event and t-shirts for all students to take home to remember and advertise the engineering profession to other students,” said Jim Young, AEE Huntsville Board Member and Education Coordinator.

Future City encourages students to learn more about engineering in a challenging and interesting way. Using SimCity 4 Deluxe, a well-known simulation software, students combine their concepts and visions of a city of the future into a design that addresses current urban challenges such as pollution, power consumption, crime, safety and traffic. This year’s theme, The Power of Public Spaces, challenged them to design innovative, multi-use public space.

One of the nation’s leading engineering education programs and among the most popular, Future City has received national recognition and acclaim for its role in encouraging middle school-age students nationwide to develop their interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). In 2016, the Future City Competition was the recipient of the 2016 Henry C. Turner Prize for Innovation in Construction, presented by Turner Construction Company and the National Building Museum.