Students envision future city

WASHINGTON -- When Karen Sidell's cell phone broke, she didn't throw it in the garbage or recycle it. She squirreled it away in a special junk drawer she stocked for three years.

Thrown in among the phone parts were broken pieces of a ShopVac, used plastic cups from her church, a steering wheel cover, applesauce containers, syringe caps and packing materials.

Sidell finally emptied the drawer when her daughter Christine became old enough to enter the "beauty pageant of engineering."

It's called the Future City Competition, a national contest that challenges seventh and eighth graders to envision a city 150 years in the future, and to present a tabletop model of their vision using recycled materials and spending no more than $100.

Making use of the junk drawer materials, along with broken ornamental glass and 11 mirrored disco balls, Christine Sidell and two classmates from Faith Lutheran Jr./Sr. High School won the Las Vegas regional competition in January, and got to take their model of a futuristic Costa Rican city to the nationals this week in Washington.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the city of tomorrow created by Sidell, Alaina Reid and Christopher Cornish looks a bit like Las Vegas. It had no fewer than five flashing spheres, rotating lights and plenty of shiny surfaces. Unfortunately, neon was too expensive.

For two months, the teenagers, who all are 13, designed their city using Sim City video game software and the advice of Mitchell Kunich, a retired Department of Energy engineer. For two months, they met before and after school every day and on Saturdays at Sidell's house to build their city.

Sidell likened the exercise to building a puzzle. The three-member team juggled the project in between classes, homework, orchestra and cheer practice.

Besides looking like the future, the presentation had to show solutions to real-life problems such as energy production, roads and public transportation, waste removal, health care and food needs.

The winners traveled to Washington, D.C., last Sunday, accompanied by their families, Kunich and Dennis Holmes, Faith Lutheran's computer science department chairman. Erik Ball, the school's drama teacher, stepped in to coach the kids on how to give a good presentation, Holmes said.

Thirty-seven teams competed. When the five finalists were announced on Wednesday, the Las Vegas team was not among them.

For the Faith Lutheran students, it was a learning experience and the first time anyone from the school made it to the nationals in eight years of competing.

"I learned about teamwork and compromise," Christine Sidell said. "I didn't know anything about engineering."