In the near future, we'll all live in tightly packed arcologies, including ocean cities — where we'll shoot at each other and fire rocket launchers in the air. This gorgeous "seagoing eco-city" comes from the first-person shooter Brink.

The San Francisco Bay Bridge, a marvel of engineering when it was constructed in the 1930s, is now crumbling and unstable. As construction teams work on replacing it with another bridge, architects suggest ways the abandoned span could be reused.

The worlds of the fantastical are full of recurring themes and strange ideas, and we love to find patterns in the chaos. Here are our 10 greatest lists from 2009.

Dubai isn't the only city to see extravagant architectural projects fall by the wayside. Many of New York's more ambitious concept buildings, including a Frank Gehry-designed museum and this sky-high series of individual townhouses, also failed to materialize this decade.

Tim Warnock has provided concept artwork and designs for Watchmen and Harry Potter. Just for fun, he's created a series of stunning matte paintings that capture Bioshock's underwater city of Rapture in its glory days, all shimmering art deco.

London is currently auditioning ideas for a new tourist attraction as part of the 2012 Olympics. On the shortlist is MIT's digital Cloud, a self-sustaining observation deck made of transparent bubbles that broadcast information to viewers below.

Taking a cue from The Simpsons Movie, a team of engineers wants to enclose Houston inside a giant polymer dome. But the plan isn't to keep pollution in, it's to prevent heat and storms from destroying the city. [via NextNature]

Many of Boston's most ambitious and expensive construction projects have stalled out, leaving behind unsightly construction sites. The Boston Globe has asked architects for their ideas for making the sites more useful and attractive.

What will the New Yorks, Londons, and Tokyos of tomorrow look like? Will they be technological Edens, grim dystopias, or entirely obliterated? We look at science fiction's take on the future of today's cities to gauge our urban future.

Andrew Kudless proposed city is inspired by the Fremen sietches of Frank Herbert's Dune, and he believes that the principles for conserving and storing water on Arrakis can be applied to the American desert.