clipped from: www.guardian.co.uk In the event that it is ever actually built, the Freedom Ship, "the world's first mobile, floating city", will have to be constructed at sea: there isn't a port on the planet that would be big enough to accommodate it. "Imagine a mile-long stretch of 25-storey buildings in New York City; now imagine that floating on the water," one reporter wrote, after detailed plans were released a few years ago. As it turned out, "imagine" proved a well-chosen verb. But there was no denying the breathtaking ambition of the Freedom Ship's designers: artists' impressions showed a gargantuan, flat-bottomed slab of glass and concrete, 340ft high, capable of housing 60,000 people and topped with several aeroplane runways. The QE2 was pictured alongside, for comparative purposes; it looked like some kind of tugboat.