Future City Competition

Future City Competition is a hands-on cross-curricular educational program where students imagine, research, design, and build cities of the future. The program combines the engineering design process with project management as students create futuristic cities that showcase their solution to a citywide sustainability issue. It promotes STEM learning and teamwork by challenging students to use the engineering design process to create innovative, sustainable cities, and allows students to do what engineers do.

• Ages: 11–18 years old
• Schedule: The entire competition can be done over 4 months.

Future City Competition is created for middle schoolers in or out of the classroom, and Future City High School promotes STEM learning and teamwork. The program is project-based and hands-on, applies math and science concepts to the real world, and is suitable for all program environments. Students, educators, and mentors participate, and students have access to STEM tools, activities, and rubrics as they design a futuristic city with innovative solutions to some of today’s most pressing issues. Students also explore career options as part of the program.

The mission of Future City starts with a question: how can we make the world a better place? To answer it, students imagine, research, design, and build cities of the future that showcase their solution to a citywide sustainability issue. This year’s theme is “Fire Resilient Future – Design a resilient future city that can prevent, protect, and recover from urban wildfires.”

More than 45,000 students annually in the US, Canada, China, Egypt, and Nigeria participate in Future City Competition. EA has provided SimCity software to Future City for more than 30 years. DiscoverE is a nonprofit providing every student with an engineering experience and the resources, programs, and connections to improve the understanding of engineering.

Educators and students describe the program in several ways: “Future City is a program that is essential for building interest in our students for STEM and for future engineering careers.” Another educator notes, “This was our first year, and all of the students that participated are planning to return next year.” A 7th grade student says, “I think future city is an easy way to have students have fun and learn about engineering.”

Last updated May 19, 2026.