The growing need of energy sustainability and independence has been highlighted by the recent surge in investment in renewable forms of energy, with a primary emphasis on wind power. While the process of developing a wind park is challenging in any environment, there are some very unique aspects of the urban environment which presents challenges to the successful creation of a project, such as the high cost of investment, the limitation of a relatively small land area outside of setbacks in which to site turbines, a general lack of elevation change, permitting, the need for extensive community outreach, wake and turbulence resulting from nearby buildings including future development, and the increased surface roughness of an urban landscape on the unperturbed wind resource.

A comparison will be made between the wind analysis and siting challenges experienced in the development of a wind park in the urban landscape of Atlantic City, NJ and of a wind park in the rural and mountainous landscape of rural Pennsylvania. This comparison will look at issues of meteorological data collection, microscale and mesoscale modeling, wind resource analysis at hub height, the modeling of wake and turbulence impacts from buildings versus trees and complex terrain, and a brief discussion of permitting issues and community outreach.