Lyon Future Cities Makes History

By MAGGIE MCMURRAY

Moapa Valley Progress

The nation’s capital will soon see yet another group of students from Moapa Valley. The Mack Lyon Middle School Future Cities Team will be travelling to Washington DC later this month to compete at the national level after winning it all at the Nevada state level. The Lyon team was crowned State Champions on Saturday, January 21, during the all day Future Cities competition in Las Vegas.

It was a historic event for the school. Though Lyon Middle School has fielded a team for many years now, this was the first time in school history that the Lyon team had won a state title. Twenty-one teams from all over the state brought the models and ideas they created to make the perfect city of the future. At the state competition, the teams also faced a tough panel of judges that questioned their knowledge of every aspect of the city and city systems in order to determine the winner.

The competition was a culmination of an entire semester of work for the team; both during and after school. Under the direction of teacher Crystal Blackwell and mentor Jacqulyn Pray, team members Robert Bradford, Emily Macias, Romeo Elenes, and alternate Zoe Zubia, spent hours learning how a city works, dreaming up their city, and then constructing their model.

Their city was named Haizhe and was established in the year 2146. This city has a population of 737,682 citizens and stands where Ningbo, China, stands today.

The team named their city after the Chinese word for jellyfish. That’s because the symbol for jellyfish also stands for hope and peace, two qualities they wanted their city to have.
The teams are judged on more than just a cool city name and a model, though. The competition begins when the teams use the SIM City computer program to construct a virtual city. Then they make up a project plan for their city that covers all the engineering aspects from transportation to waste management to water. The team decides how each of these necessities will be handled in their future city and then incorporates those decisions into their plans.

Next the team moves on to building an actual model of their city, with close attention being paid to proper scale and city planning issues and zoning. Once the city is built, the team creates a presentation around their city that puts their ideas into words that can help the judges and other observers understand what they are doing. They must also be able to answer extensive questions about their city in a satisfactory way.

The cities are given a specific challenge that must be answered in their construction details. This year’s challenge dealt with the creation and use of public space. The topic was “The Power of Public Space” and their challenge was to include a distributed network of innovative, multi-use public spaces that served their city’s diverse population.

Different team members had different strengths, but they all worked together to make their team a winner. Team member Emily Macias’ specialty was doing research. She said, “It’s funny because most people don’t like that part,” she said of her role as researcher. “I also learned how hard team projects are because everyone works differently. In the end, I think it made us stronger.”

In addition to being crowned state champions, team Haizhe also won several other awards, including Best Virtual City, Best Project Design, Top 5, 2nd place model, Teacher Of The Year for Crystal Blackwell, and Alumni of the Year for mentor Victoria Pray. These awards all carried cash prizes in addition to the grand prize trip to Washington, D.C. to compete at the national level.

Blackwell was very proud of her students. “I had a great feeling when we dropped off our model,” she said. “I knew the kids were going to rock it. They had the most phenomenal presentation I’ve ever seen in all my years doing this.”
Jacqulyn Pray was proud of the team as well. But she was also proud of the kids who participated in prior years. “I think a part of this win is for everyone who’s ever done it,” she said.