The 2023 — 2024 Future City Competition Theme
Electrify Your Future
Every day we plug in and power up, thanks to electricity. Electricity is essential for heating,
cooling, and ventilation. With each day comes new demands on our electrical grid: more
electric cars on the road, more buildings switching to electric heat pumps, and more industries
electrifying manufacturing processes formerly powered by combustion engines running on
fossil fuels.
Today most electricity is generated by large power plants, with over 60% in 2022 from fossil
fuels such as coal and natural gas. Burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation is
the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and China. These emissions
cause global warming, which in turn causes climate change. As the world works to adapt to and
mitigate the impacts of climate change, we need to change how we generate electric power.
There is a growing consensus that future cities could be powered completely by electricity.
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? Today’s engineers, scientists, architects, and city leaders are working
together to make our cities run on electricity created from energy with minimal environmental
impact. Can you imagine what future cities will be like when engineers find and implement
solutions to the challenge of electrifying our cities?
The students’ challenge:
Design a 100% electrically powered city with energy generated from sources that keep your
citizens and the environment healthy and safe.
The mission of the DiscoverE Future City Competition
is to provide a fun and exciting educational engineering program for middle school students that combines a
stimulating engineering challenge with a "hands-on" application to present their vision of a city of the future.
The Philadelphia Regional Future City Competition is a 501.c.3 educational outreach program of
DiscoverE.
We are one of over 50 regional programs conducted throughout the the United States and the world with the goal
to introduce middle school students to the engineering profession.
The Future City Program continues to be on the National Association of Secondary School Principals' National Advisory List of Student Contests and Activities.
The Philadelphia Regional Competition draws schools from Philadelphia and surrounding counties including the Lehigh Valley, Southern New Jersey and Delaware. Students from middle schools and after school programs in the region form teams consisting of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students who work with a teacher and an engineer mentor from September to January.
For Web site Information see Steering Committee
Where are the Future City schools - 2023?
Last Modified 11/01/2023
