Farmington Hills School Finishes 4th at Future City Competition

A model portraying the exotic city of Istanbul at least 150 years in the future earned students from the Jain Society of Greater Detroit 4th place honors in the 2014 Future City competition, held Monday at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi. 

The Farmington Hills school competed with 18 other public school, private school and homeschooled teams in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) competition. This year's theme: “Tomorrow’s Transit: Design A Way To Move People In And Around Your City.”

Teacher Rajesh Jain said students chose Istanbul because the city has serious transportation challenges. 

"The challenge is, how do you preserve the charm and culture of the city and take care of the problems of the city," he said. 

Students started working on their concept at the beginning of the school year. They first wrote an essay and built a virtual city using Simcity video game and Google Hangout to chat and collaboratively work through their ideas. 

At the Future City competition, presenters Pritish Patil, Yug Chauhan, Rishabh Parekh and Kevin Zhang, all age 13, and 12-year-old David Brooks, gave judges a tour of their three-dimensional model. 

Parekh said participating in the competition has taught him many skills he can use in his life and future career, from teamwork and public speaking, to researching and writing. 

"It also teaches you the spirit of competition," he said. 

In addition to their fourth place award, the Jain Society team won Best Design, Engineering & Construction, sponsored by Walbridge, and The William Barclay Parsons Excellence Award sponsored by Parsons Brinckerhoff Michigan, Inc.