the city of the future

The History Channel is holding a competition called "The City of the Future: A Design and Engineering Challenge."

From the competition website:

The civilizations covered in Engineering an Empire on The History Channel achieved the impossible—they were the first to design and engineer marvels that astonished the world and transcended time. The History Channel, with its sponsors Infiniti and IBM, are challenging today's top designers, architects and engineers to do the same in The City of the Future: A Design and Engineering Challenge.

These competitions—hosted in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles—challenge teams to produce a vision of their city 100 years from now that, like the engineering and architectural marvels of past civilizations, has the staying power to endure for centuries to come.

The winning City of the Future designs from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles will continue on to the national online competition where you, the viewer, will decide who will be named the national grand prize winner! Starting January 2, design-legend and chief juror Daniel Libeskind will lead the consumer vote.

Here's the description of the winning entry from Chicago (via WorldChanging).

The winning entry, however, was absolutely deserving of the top honor. UrbanLab, headed up by, Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn, envisioned a future where water is the most valuable natural resource. In UrbanLab's world, Chicago will become a key exporter of water to regions around the country, and as such the city's entire economy must shift toward the retention and distribution of water. Entitled "Growing Water," the design team presented a Chicago of the future where all east-west boulevards have been returned to greenspace. Vast swathes of native grasses and hardy trees will replace familiar routes like Grand Avenue and Diversey Parkway. A clean, efficient, elevated monorail system will eliminate the need for street-level travel.

These strips of grass and shrubbery, then, would serve to capture precipitation, biologically filter it and funnel the clean water into the Chicago River, which would then replenish Lake Michigan. UrbanLab's concept is designed to allow for 100% of Chicago's water to be recaptured for use or export. Of course, the design requires the flow of the Chicago River to be returned to it's original pre-20th-century route flowing into the lake.

Anyone care to sponsor a design competition on Metro Manila in the 22nd century?

Image credit: The Chicago City of the Future Award: UrbanLab, from The History Channel