SOUTHFIELD ? Seventh and eighth grade students from metropolitan Detroit are creating some very futuristic scenarios for how we will live with technology later this decade. They?ll be displaying their ideas on Jan. 27 as part of the Future City celebration of National Engineers Week.

Some student-created scenarios include: Auto-navigating vehicles running on electromagnetic roads. Climate-controlled underground homes in the desert with giant plasma screen windows that have interchangeable pictures so one day you have an idyllic Pacific sunset and another you?re peering down the Rockies from 11,000 feet. Clean, safe, renewable energy sources powering everything from 1,000 mile-an-hour trains and covered moving sidewalks to homes, schools and manufacturing plants.

This year, more than 750 students and 40 middle school teams from 30 school districts including Ann Arbor, Bloomfield Hills, Detroit, Eastpointe, Royal Oak, Pontiac, Southfield and Waterford will be participating. The Engineering Society of Detroit is the coordinator of the Michigan region Future City Competition.

?Part of our mission as a professional society is to foster the growth and development of engineers and scientists of the future,? said Don Goodwin, President of ESD and Vice President of Scientific Laboratories and Proving Grounds for DaimlerChrysler Corporation. ?This level of participation is a testimony to our commitment to reach out and make math and science more interesting and relevant to students encouraging them to become Detroit?s future leaders in these career fields.?

This program brings students together to design, build and present a city of the future?complete with roads, sewers, water, transportation, businesses, power plants, residential homes and schools. It?s a team-based program made up of students, a teacher and a practicing engineer mentor. The students learn how to conduct research, develop problem-solving skills, make decisions as a group and make presentations. But most importantly, the students learn how to apply the knowledge they learn to real world situations, while seeing first hand how an engineer turns ideas into reality.

Teams from 36 regions around the country hold competitions in January and the winners go on to the national competition in February during National Engineers Week in Washington D.C.