Imagine a city where the unemployment rate is lower than 1 percent, where every child can get an education right at home, where cars don't exist and a high-speed "people-mover" can shuttle you to any destination in less than 30 seconds.

Welcome to L.U.R.E -- the Land of Untapped Renewable Energy -- a city of the future that exists right now, at least in miniature form, constructed on a table by the three eighth-graders who chartered it.

When it comes to the perfect place to live, the sprawling metropolis in southern New Mexico would seem to have all bases covered.

School is free for everyone, brought into individual homes via a holographic teacher. Nearly everyone in town is gainfully employed as an engineer.

Mountain goat racing and sand surfing satisfy a yen for sports and leisure. And if, for no apparent reason, you need a getaway, there's the Space Shuttle Gilligan to whisk you on a four-month vacation to the moon.

Of course, everything is powered by renewable energy, which was at the heart of yesterday's Pittsburgh Regional Future City Competition at the Carnegie Music Hall.

The event challenged middle school students to design a city of the future with a focus on water conservation and reuse. The competition, which drew more than 500 students from around the region, also aimed to inspire them to consider engineering as a profession.

Yesterday's winners were from Mary Queen of Apostles School in New Kensington. They will travel to Washington, D.C., to compete in the national finals in February. St. Bede School in Point Breeze took second place; Trinity Middle School in Washington took third.

Teams of students had been dreaming up their cities since October, relying on SimCity 4 Deluxe software to help them build three-dimensional models to scale.

L.U.R.E. was the creation of Anna Phillips, Samantha Dodd, Rebecca Sellers and several others from Triadelphia Middle School in Wheeling, W.Va., who finished in fourth place.

"As you come into our city from the other side of the Rio Grande, you will be greeted by a smiley face," said Anna, 13, offering a quick tour of the city.

The teams were required to make their model cities entirely out of recycled materials. L.U.R.E's coffee shop was housed in a Starbucks Frappuccino cup; office buildings were fashioned from paper towel rolls.

Further down the hall was another city of the future, Jacapelashhia, taking its name from the initials of its creators, Emily Giand, Shane Collier, and Haleigh Kern, seventh- and eighth-grade gifted and talented students at Beaver Falls Middle School.

Situated off the coast of Italy, the city is designed to be powered almost entirely by solar energy, but its real draws are its "variety of recreation and leisure facilities," parks and beaches, Shane said.

"It brought out my creative side," he said of the competition. "We were just being creative and being ourselves."