Magnetized city attracts attention in D.C. event

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Feb. 23, 2001 | 11:21 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Middle school students from across the country swarmed to the nation's capital this week for the finals of a national competition to design a city of the future.

Many of the 21 finalist teams were from big cities or affluent big-city suburbs. But one was not. The only squad from Nevada hailed from Sandy Valley, a hamlet 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

The three-member Sandy Valley Middle School squad in January bested 49 other Nevada teams in the 2001 Future City Competition -- including big-city rivals from Las Vegas and Reno -- for a chance to compete in the nation's capital on Wednesday.

Brandi Gilstrap, 14, Nikki Kranz, 13, and Alexis Mejia, 15, presented judges with their table-top model and a futuristic concept for a "tized" (short for magnetized) city -- a city powered in part by magnets. The city also featured underground processing plants that would turn sewage into fuel for methane combustion car engines.

The competition was fierce. The Sandy Valley school faced schools from New York City, Chicago, Miami, Detroit, Philadelphia and Minneapolis.

To imagine a city of the future, the Sandy Valley pupils first had to conceptualize problems facing modern-day cities.

"They had to deal with things that we take for granted in the city, like sidewalks," said Sandy Valley teacher Erik Mateljan, who commutes from Las Vegas. "They don't really have sidewalks in Sandy Valley."

"It was kind of hard," Nikki said, "because I haven't really been to big cities, except to Las Vegas visiting relatives."

The group, aided by several teachers and a Las Vegas engineer, developed the innovative tized concept last fall, using SimCity 2000 software. They spent months working nearly every day after school, sometimes three or four hours, researching, trouble-shooting, building their model, writing an essay and polishing the presentation.

Alexis first floated the idea to use magnets, including a magnetic-driven commuter train. City buildings were constructed atop gigantic magnets so that the structures levitate, insulated from earthquakes by a cushion of air.

"They came up with crazy ideas, and I would try to round them out and bring it into reality," said Dennis Brown, an engineer with G.C. Wallace Co., who trekked to Sandy Valley every two weeks to offer guidance. "They learned how to dream -- to visualize a city of the future and let their imaginations grow."

In the end, their tized city was not among the top five winning projects at the national competition. A team from St. Barnabas Catholic School in Chicago won with its "floating city built to study and develop ocean resources."

But that didn't matter, the students said. The project taught them how to think creatively about crime, pollution, transportation, communication and education.

"They came up with some really unique ideas for all of the problems they encountered," Nevada's state competition organizer and engineer Wendy Fenner said.

Plus the students got a free five-day trip to Washington, courtesy of competition host Bentley Systems Inc.

"We saw the Lincoln Monument -- I think that was the best part of the trip for me," Brandi said.