Instability of long cylinders

These towers would act much like the spokes of a
wheel-shaped station, and might be a good idea for
structural and aesthetic reasons. However, for
rotational stability (and indeed, any critical
systems) one would want things to be inherent in the
design. Critical systems that are active rather than
passive would be very vulnerable and also lead to the
possibility of a "chain reaction" failure, where one
system going down leads to another going down and so
forth.