Here's a collection of promised skylines we never got to see -- and a few that may yet come to be -- as seen from the imagined eyes of those who live there.

Few people like to work in Frank Lloyd Wright's 5,278-foot Chicago spire, The Illinois. Almost everything below the 50th floor is an elevator lobby, and almost everything above the 300th floor is perpetually covered in vomit due to the skyscraper's oscillations -- it moves in 40-foot circles at its tip.

"If the lights go out, that means the nuclear reactor just melted down."

It was a joke in the mountain city, a great way to greet newcomers. Except one night the lights actually did go out, and it just wasn't funny any more.

if I were a pixel, I know where I would hang my boots