Cinnaminson Middle School students design a city of the future for the Philadelphia Regional Future City Competition
Stephen Finn
The Sun
“It’s crunch time,” said Garwood Bacon, Reading and Project Challenge teacher at Cinnaminson Middle School.
The students in Bacon’s Project Challenge class were abuzz with activity as they prepared for the Philadelphia Regional Future City Competition on Saturday, Jan. 19. The kids had been working on their project since September and had been putting in extra hours, even weekends, to make sure everything came together in time.
Future City is an annual competition for which regional schools prepare a conceptual display model of a city that utilizes future technologies and solutions to modern-day problems. On the day of the competition, the completed display is presented to engineers who act as judges for the event. Awards are given in a variety of categories that recognize innovative features of each city concept.
The first-place team advances to a national competition in Washington, D.C., during National Engineers Week in February.
“The idea is to introduce middle school students to the field of engineering. To teach them the engineering design process and to understand that engineering has a variety of fields,” said Bacon.
The class named its city Mirai Wa Imadesu, Japanese for “the future is now.” The design is based on modern-day Tokyo. Students Alex Boyko, Sriram Elango and Dean Clark were to be presenting their class’ project at the competition.
“Our city model is trying to demonstrate that we can recover after a natural disaster,” said Elango.
“We’re trying to create a resilient and flexible power grid in regard to natural disasters,” said Boyko.
Bacon used a Google Maps image of Cinnaminson to demonstrate how a power grid works. Students traced their city’s power lines to a power plant to see how these lines are integrated into a broader city plan.
The class decided it would run its city’s power lines underground to protect them from a variety of natural disaster scenarios. Given Tokyo’s location on a fault line, they took earthquakes into consideration for much of the design.
“It’s important for our cities to be built so resilient because we don’t know what the future could hold. Earthquakes and natural disasters can get even more powerful, climate can change, so we really need to start now making our cities more resilient, especially toward these really big natural disasters so that in the future we’ll be more prepared,” said Clark.
One of the most interesting features of Mirai Wa Imadesu is its transportation system. The students designed their city to eliminate the need for individual car ownership. All vehicles in the city run automatically out of a central hub. Residents can hail a car to pick them up from anywhere in the city much like an Uber. After reaching their destination, the car simply returns itself to the central hub.
“In the case of an earthquake or natural disaster in our city, they (cars) will all come back to this transportation hub and act as a micro-grid to provide power for the city,” said Clark.
Each team in the competition is allowed to consult with an engineer mentor during preparations. Cinnaminson resident Orla Pease, a civil engineer for the engineering firm AECOM, met with the class to talk about what she does.
“Part of the program is having an engineer mentor that will come in, talk to the students, share their own experience and help us along,” said Bacon. “She gave us the idea of dynamic charging as something to look into.”
Dynamic, or wireless, charging is a technology we are in the early stages of today. Students incorporated a variety of dynamic charging capabilities for their city like solar-powered roads that charge vehicles as they drive over them.
For Bacon, the competition is all about helping students connect what they learn in school to the world around them.
“You’re here for a reason, let’s be serious about being students and understand that there’s a reason for you being here,” said Bacon.
Visit Cinnaminsonsun.com for results of the competition.
