Although far from soothing, advances in materials science and construction technology, along with experience, are starting to help residents’ day-to-day comfort levels climb along with buildings’ heights. Experts are constantly refining ideal structural shapes, masses, and weights, as well as more obscure features like the multiton machines known as tuned mass dampers, which are designed to limit a building’s sway. — Bloomberg

Tougher building rules for skyscrapers have been drawn up by the City of London because of concerns that a high-rise, urban microclimate will generate winds capable of knocking over cyclists and pedestrians.
Developers will have to provide more comprehensive safety assessments of how proposed buildings will affect people on street level, with more robust testing of roadways and pavements using detailed scale models in wind tunnels and computer simulations. — The Guardian

The world’s biggest offshore windfarm has officially opened in the Irish Sea, amid warnings that Brexit could increase costs for future projects.

Walney Extension, off the Cumbrian coast, spans an area the size of 20,000 football pitches and has a capacity of 659 megawatts, enough to power the equivalent of 590,000 homes.

The project is a sign of how dramatically wind technology has progressed in the past five years since the previous biggest, the London Array, was finished. — The Guardian

...So today's engineers battle not only the force of gravity but the the whirling pockets of wind, known as vortices, that can cause towers to shake or vibrate. Failure to do so would make the motion of the building — or "acceleration," as engineers call it — uncomfortably noticeable. — Chicago Tribune

[...] has completed advanced wind tunnel tests on The Tower at Dubai Creek Harbour, which is set to be 100 metres taller than the 828-metre Burj Khalifa when complete.

Emaar said the wind tests were crucial in defining the final height and design aspects, while the project’s Spanish-Swiss architect Santiago Calatrava Valls added that they "were an important component in the structural design stage, and we have deployed innovative engineering techniques to confirm the strength of the new icon". — thenational.ae

The City of London Corporation has promised a more "rigorous" assessment of developers' predictions of ground winds, following complaints about strong gusts outside the 20 Fenchurch Street Building, better known as the Walkie Talkie.

"I almost got blown over the other day walking up past the building," a sales assistant working nearby said earlier this year. "When I got around the corner it was fine. I was scared to go back." — bbc.com

Because of its size and intense radiation, Texas leads the nation in solar energy potential, but the solar industry has long struggled to get a foothold in the state... and solar energy currently makes up a tiny percentage of the state’s energy portfolio. That’s beginning to change. Improving technology has driven down the price of solar power, making it more competitive with other resources­ — even without incentives, developers say. — The Texas Tribune

A research team from the Mechanical Engineering department at University of Utah is using high-performance computing resources from XSEDE to instantaneously and accurately simulate how infrastructure elements, such as parks, buildings, and parking lots, as well as their specifications and variations, affect air characteristics and quality in urban settings. — Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment

On stormy days and windy nights, Tribeca residents say their neighborhood is filled with a strange, high-pitched whistling sound coming from the redeveloped World Trade Center site. It's an inopportune location for howling (although, really, where is?), but it's hardly the first building to surprise its neighbors by humming or whistling. [...]

But just to be clear? It's not haunted. Port Authority's rep told Pix 11 he hopes ghost stories won't "become part of the dialogue." — gizmodo.com