Middle School Students Show Off Designs For Greener, More Efficient City Spaces

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Middle school students showed off their smarts Saturday in the annual Future City competition, designing spaces for a greener, more efficient city.

"This is actually the fire department, and there are little drones on top where they can fly all over the city to put out fires," Phoebe Park, Sophia Gunawan and Jessica Kim explained to CBS2's Ali Bauman.

The eighth graders from Little Neck re-imagined industrial Port Morris in the South Bronx as a flourishing eco-friendly park.

"There are mainly just abandoned warehouses in Port Morris, and we could turn them into residential areas and areas for the citizens to enjoy themselves," they said.

The girls were just three of 100 hopeful young engineers who created or re-designed a public city space of the future.

"It helps the kids learn about careers, about engineering and science, and about why it's important for them to learn about it in school," organizer Karen Armfield said.

Each of the impressive projects will be judged by a panel of 50 professional engineers, and the winners get to go on to the national competition in Washington, D.C.

"How do people get from point A to point B to point C, efficient uses of current technology, future technology," judge and structural engineer Maurice Roberts said.

"So we have this greenhouse here that basically provides a lot of the vegetables and food for our apartments," Sophia Vinasco said of her design.

For most of the students at the show in PS 126, they've been working on their projects for four months.