Edna Brewer became the first school from Oakland to win the regional Future Cities competition Saturday, when students presented Solaqua, a model city on an island that features a seawater-powered subway.

The model city "was kind of beautiful in its simplicity," said Brewer Principal Jaime Marantz.

The annual Future Cities contest challenges middle school students to design a complete city — one that could exist sometime in the future.

Edna Brewer students came up with a unique concept: a tropical island city that is pollution-free and has a tourism-based economy. In addition to the seawater-powered subway, the multi-layered model includes solar-powered homes, farmland for residents to grow their own food and a desalinization plant.

All the technology in the city, except for the "hover scooters" used by residents, exists today.

"We tried to be as realistic as possible," student Luke Joachim said.

Edna Brewer students will travel to Washington, D.C., next month to enter their model in the national Future Cities contest. Winners get a chance to go to U.S. Space Camp in Alabama, modeled after NASA's astronaut training facility.

All of the Edna Brewer students said they would want to live in the city they created.

"It doesn't have the smog the Bay Area has," Joachim said. "It's a better Las Vegas."

Oakland Tribune
401 13th Street
Oakland, California 94612
(510) 208-6330 Switchboard
(510) 293-2709 Online Content
www.oaklandtribune.com