Wired: Mile-high skyscrapers and floating cities that never were

Urbanists are, by nature, dreamers.

Who among us hasn't had some pretty far-out visions of what we would add to the landscape if only we had an endless supply of money?

Back to Earth, you! This is real life, not Sim City!

Last month's Wired featured a slideshow of nine different pie-in-the-sky ideas from cities around the world, presenting a humorous "alternate reality" on the likely outcomes of the project, and a "reality check" on why they just wouldn't be practical.

Take, for example, Frank Lloyd Wright's concept for the one mile tall "The Illinois" in Chicago.

Not only was the engineering for such a tall structure thought impossible until the late 1990s, but everything below the 50th floor would be an elevator lobby and everything above the 300th floor would be covered in vomit due to the building's oscillations.

This is definitely the kind of criticism I can get into - dripping with sarcasm and dry humor.