Solarpunk

Wood can do very well in compression and can do vertical loads quite strongly. This a 25 story wood building using the new mass timber method. You can't do that with just 2x4s from home Depot of course. https://www.dezeen.com/2022/08/03/ascent-tower-milwaukee-worlds-tallest-timber-building/

Not exactly. "Mass timber" is a newer construction material made from wood, but put together in a way suitable for tall buildings, including structural elements for skyscrapers. Currently, the tallest timber skyscraper is the 25-story Ascent MKE building in Milwaukee.

The fire safety challenges are real, though. It's just that timber as a building material has different characteristics. It's under a lot of study from fire safety researchers, as they work out the tradeoffs and how to best mitigate the weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

And it's not all bad. Timber is actually stronger than steel at high heat, and the beams don't contain voids that allow fire and flames to travel along the structural elements as steel or concrete elements might. So the key is that the engineers need to design things with the timber's properties in mind.

It looks like they're still using I beams and steel for the structure. The wood is for panneling & walls.

Yes, though it really depends on the city. They all have different rules. It's interesting how zoning rules shape a lot of how North America looks.

One type of building that's becoming more common are "five over one", where you build one floor with concrete and then floors over with wood. These buildings have gathered criticism for being super generic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1

Mass timber is a new method of construction, so cities have been updating their laws to reflect it.