It’s funny, this obsession we have with predicting the cities of the future, no? It’s as though urban space is always already outdated, battered, overused and redundant, in need of updating, up-scaling and re-development. Such reverie isn’t strictly the province of the toiling masses either. Architects, engineers, businessmen and politicians are equally prone to dreaming up utopian urban plans. Thankfully, few have been put into stone, steel and concrete, because when they have the results tended to be mixed.

A successful (Paris’s reconfiguration around wide boulevards in the 19th century) and unsuccessful (the master plan for Brasilia in the 50s) plan are among the three completed urban visions covered in WebUrbanist’s 10 Fantastic Cities of the Future. For our part we’ve been fascinated by the plan for a carbon neutral development outside Dubai called Masdar City (pictured above) ever since it was announced last year. We just don’t understand how a city in the middle of the desert won’t be wasteful. Looks like a mirage from here.