The future city competition took place on January 25th and spanned a total of 8 hours. Stratford Preparatory saw big success in this competition and was a culmination of a year's worth of hard work from students taking the engineering course. This competition tested students' ability to be creative and implement technological innovations inspired by their learning thus far. In addition to building the city, students had to write a paper describing the innovations they are implementing and the issue it aims to solve. Each year the future city has a different theme inspired by current issues. This year the goal was to create a floating city set 100 years from now as a solution to the rising sea levels. Outside of the main competition, there were also several special award categories which stratford performed very well in and secured multiple wins. For best residential, the winning team was Aloha city which had the layout of a main island which connects out to separate domes. This model was designed so that the domes collect water when it rains and send it to the eco wall which can be recycled and used to sustain the main city.

There were many models that showed the same level of creativity and innovation and secured awards in the special categories. The awards were as follows: Tidal Halo for Best Visualization of a Smart Sustainable City (cash prize), Keymark won the land survey award (cash prize), SanFransurfio won Best Age Friendly City, Aecor City for the most innovative infrastructure Systems, and Aqualux for Best transportation system. However, Stratford Preparatory students didn’t only win in the special categories, the team Aqua Nova won third place overall! During the event, students also got to hear presentations from other schools which utilizes robotics, AI and also improvements in healthcare. Following the competition, as a part of the engineering elective are studying biomimicry and learning how to enhance their creations using this emerging study. We can’t wait to see what our school's young innovators achieve next!