Santiago Calatrava's stunning Liège-Guillemins TGV station opened last month in Belgium, a glowing hump of glass and steel that's built to serve 36,000 passengers a day. The structure declared a new age of transit for the former industrial city located in the tiny country, which will now be a major hub in the growing high-speed network that's spiderwebbing across Europe. As energy and oil uncertainty and high carbon emissions make train travel more and more appealing, high-speed railways are being planned from Southern California to Saudi Arabia. And architects are being tapped to design dramatic stations in major cities, which serve as efficient ways for travelers to get from point A to point B, but also become new urban landmarks signifying a progressive, sustainable culture--a kind of cathedral for a 21st-century city. Here are eight more high-speed rail stations coming soon to a city near you. --Alissa Walker

The Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (or ARTIC), will be the first station in California's planned high speed rail system, which the states' voters endorsed last fall. Designed by HOK Los Angeles and Parsons Brinkerhoff, the station's signature archway will be covered with an EFTE membrane, which controls the amount of natural light and heat passing through the glass roof. Estimated completion date: 2013.

As part of Italy's new high-speed network, the Florence hub will connect to the city's existing rail line with a tramway. Foster + Partners won a competition for the design with co-architects Lancietti Passaleva Giordo and Associates and engineering consultants ARUP, conceiving of a station that bursts from the underground tracks with an arched roof that evokes 19th-century architecture, but incorporates energy-generating photovoltaic panels. Proposed in 2002, no completion date set.

Another project by Foster + Partners, this time in partnership with Buro Happold, which will consists of four stations across Saudi Arabia as part of a new system linking Makkah and Madinah via Jeddah. Each station will be contextually designed to be appropriate for the city it resides in, but across the designs, filtered daylight roofs will help keep travelers comfortable in the desert heat. Estimated completion date: 2013.

The winner of a 2008 competition where residents were allowed to vote for their favorite structure, Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects' proposal calls for a glass tower anchored by a transit center covered in a five-acre public park which serves as both a rain catchment system and graywater recycling center. Recent concerns about how the station would integrate into the new California high-speed rail plan have caused some to believe the design is now obsolete. Estimated completion date: 2014.

A competition won by Zaha Hadid brought this sleek maze bridges and terminals to the Italian city. The station itself will act as a massive, high-traffic bridge, linking the two business districts on opposite sides of the station with a commercial platform on the upper level, from which travelers will descend down to their trains. Proposed 2003, no opening date set.

A plan by Ingenhoven Architects occupies the space underneath a plaza that's adjacent to Paul Bonatz's historic rail station, completed in 1928. Bubble-like glass "light wells" act like skylights for the tracks underneath. New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff criticized the design for neglecting to stay true to the original structure. Proposed 2009, no opening date set.

SOM designed this terminal station, which will be located in a new city outside of Beijing named the Tanggu District. The design incorporates a lightweight, latticed roof structure that seamlessly flows into the landscape of the surrounding park. Estimated completion date: 2011.

While not officially in the running to be produced, this contest-winning idea for a new Union Station in Chicago, Illinois by Michael Cady, Elba Gil, David Lillie, Andres Montana provides a spectacular vision of the midwestern city as a hub for all types of transport, from bus and water taxi to subway and helicopter. Proposed 2008.