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News  |  Jan 30, 2018  |  Arora

Philadelphia Students Imagine the Age-Friendly Cities of the Future

  • 2018 Future City Philadelphia
  • 2018 Future City Philadelphia
  • 2018 Future City Philadelphia

Arora was very proud to once again sponsor the Philadelphia Regional Future City Competition held on January 20, 2018. Future City is a national, STEM-based learning competition in which 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students team up to envision, design, and build a city that exists at least 100 years in the future.

Each year, the competition addresses a current sustainability issue; this year’s theme was “The Age-Friendly City.” According to the program, the student-led teams “identified an age-related challenge that exists in today’s urban environments and engineered two innovative solutions that allow their future city’s senior citizens to be as active and as independent as they would like to be.”

The competition includes several phases:

  • The design of a virtual city using SimCity software
  • A narrative that describes the unique aspects of their city
  • A city model which students build to scale from recycled materials
  • A 7-minute presentation that allows each team to highlight what makes their city special

Arora employees volunteered their time throughout different phases of the competition. Donna Guzewski, a Senior Mechanical Engineer, and Arthur Simpson, a Fire/Life Safety Designer, served as virtual city judges, scoring the SimCity component of each team’s submission. Allan Stock, a Senior Project Manager, served as a judge on the day of the event, assessing the scale models and the presentations.

Queen of Angels Regional Catholic School from Willow Grove, PA won this year’s competition with their city Taiohi, which means “youthful” in the Eastern Polynesian language of Maori. Allan said he was thrilled with the team’s presentation, which concluded with a fantastic performance of the song “Young at Heart.” Eisenhower Science and Technology Leadership Academy won the “Rethinking Infrastructure for the Age-Friendly City” award, which Arora sponsored. Congratulations to Queen of Angels, Eisenhower STL Academy, and all the participants!

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