The lower atmosphere of Venus is denser than the surface of Earth’s ocean, but with extremely violent currents. The upper atmosphere - at the “inhabitable” level - has similar but much less dense winds, with the added henefit of a charmingly toxic and aggressive haze of sulphuric acid.
It might just about be possible to build a floating research station, at vast effort and expense, but floating cities are not going to happen without some near-magical breakthroughs in materials science and engineering.
And without access to the surface, there isn’t much to do above Venus anyway.
The acid clouds aren't that bad. People have even worked out how to manufacture PTFE out of the Venusian atmosphere, so there's your acid proofing right there. We already know how to build lighter than air craft.
And without access to the surface, there isn’t much to do above Venus anyway.
Access to the surface is perfectly doable using teleoperated robots. You can lower them onto the surface with a store of a phase-change substance for cooling. Dry ice might be suitable for that. When they run out, you haul them back up.
There's wasn't that much to do in the desert where Las Vegas is located, either.
What if the small balloons were the size of a Las Vegas resort, and the average ones where something like Manhattan?
I wonder if there'd be some tangible benefit to colonizing Venus for adventurous entrepreneurial types... "There's gold in and/or on them thar clouds!"
The society that might arise in an entirely fluid, borderless geography might have a certain attraction. Venus might wind up being the next Las Vegas, writ large in the 21st century.
With floating cities, the idea of a space elevator isn't that crazy. What could we do with space elevators on Venus?
You could have ultra-high altitude balloons that can act as staging centers for rotorvators. Those would be way cheaper than space elevators to manufacture.