The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy PART 2: CON

Communities around the country are rejecting data center projects.

In 2023, two data center projects were canceled because communities pushed back. In 2024, it was six. Last year it jumped to twenty-five. And right now, nearly a hundred projects are facing organized opposition.

Some people see those numbers and worry. I don't.

In fact, it may be one of the healthiest signs of local democracy we've seen in years.

Because for a long time, the assumption was that if a developer showed up with enough money and enough lawyers, communities were expected to say yes. The project was inevitable. The growth was inevitable. The future was inevitable. The public hearing was mostly theater.

But lately people have started asking a surprisingly reasonable question:

"What exactly are we getting in return?"

And that's where the conversation gets uncomfortable.

Because nobody wakes up hoping a giant warehouse full of blinking machines gets built behind the community center. Data centers aren't exactly charming. No windows. No personality. Just a huge concrete box sitting next to a substation.

The difference is that unlike a factory, they employ relatively few people once construction is complete.

Unlike housing, they don't solve a shortage. Unlike a shopping district, they don't create a place where people actually gather.

They consume land, power, water, and infrastructure while often delivering benefits that feel strangely abstract to the people living next door, but enrich tech companies and billionaires.

Cloud capacity. AI training. Reliability. Fast data transfer. Those things matter. But they don't always matter to the specific community being asked to host them. And that's the tension.

Supporters often argue that if a town rejects a project, the investment will simply move somewhere else. That's true. But that doesn't automatically mean the town made a mistake.

We've seen this movie before too.

For most of the twentieth century, communities were told they needed to accept whatever large infrastructure project arrived at their doorstep because progress demanded it. Highways. Industrial facilities. Power plants. Urban renewal projects. The logic was always similar: accept the disruption today because prosperity will arrive tomorrow. 

Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes the prosperity flowed elsewhere while the local community kept the noise, traffic, pollution, and land-use consequences. 

History is full of places that were told they were standing in the way of progress when they were actually asking entirely reasonable questions about costs.

Infrastructure has a quiet, ruthless logic to it. But so does self-preservation.

A community's job is not to maximize national computing capacity. A community's job is to look after the people who already live there. Those are not always the same thing.

Right now the new railroad analogy gets thrown around a lot. Data centers are supposedly the railroads of the AI era. Maybe. But railroads connected towns. They moved people, goods, and opportunity directly into local economies.

A data center is different. Most residents will never enter one. Many won't work in one. Some may barely notice what it does at all beyond the transmission lines and substations that accompany it.

That's not an argument that data centers have no value. Clearly they do.

The internet runs on physical infrastructure. AI runs on physical infrastructure. Modern life runs on physical infrastructure. The question isn't whether data centers are useful. The question is whether every community has an obligation to host them.

And the answer may be no.

Sometimes the right decision is to negotiate. Sometimes it's to demand stronger protections. Sometimes it's to ask for a better deal. And sometimes it's to look at a proposal and conclude that the costs outweigh the benefits.

Not every patch of land needs to become part of the next technology boom. Not every community needs to sacrifice its priorities because a developer says the future depends on it.

The train may indeed be coming. But communities aren't required to build a station every time someone lays track in their direction.

History suggests that saying no is sometimes just as important as saying yes.

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The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy PART 1: PRO

The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy INTRODUCTION

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Get the Details: 

• Data center impact on local communities: Balancing growth infrastructure and community outcomes. - Baker Tilly US, LLP/Baker Tilly Advisory Group. LP
  
  
• How data centers are transforming local communities - Fast Company
  
  
• Why are communities pushing back against data centers? - The Harvard Gazette
  
  
• The Debate on Data Center Development: Costs, Benefits, and Community Responses - The Alliance for Civic Engagement 

• From Energy Use to Air Quality, the Many Ways Data Centers Affect US Communities - World Resources Institute

The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy Part 1: PRO

 

Communities around the country are rejecting data center projects.

In 2023, two data center projects were canceled because communities pushed back. In 2024, it was six. Last year it jumped to twenty-five. And right now, nearly a hundred projects are facing organized opposition. Historically, about 40% of those end up getting canceled.

I get the instinct. Nobody wakes up hoping a giant warehouse full of blinking machines gets built behind the community center. Data centers aren’t exactly charming. No windows, no personality, just a huge concrete box sitting next to a substation.

So the local resistance makes sense on a human level. People worry about water, power, land use, taxes. Fair questions.

But a lot of the rhetoric sounds like people believe stopping a project will somehow stop the technology itself. As if AI will glance at the zoning board minutes and say, “Well, I guess we’ll just pack it up.”

That’s not how infrastructure works. Infrastructure is like water, it flows somewhere. Block it here and it doesn’t evaporate. It just runs downhill until it finds a place willing to dig a channel.

We’ve seen this movie before: When the railroads were built in the 1800s, some towns fought them. Noise, land disputes, disruption. Perfectly reasonable concerns. The rail companies responded in the most practical way possible: they went around those towns.

The tracks didn’t disappear. The trains didn’t stop. The map just changed.

A few decades later, the places connected to the rails were booming and the bypassed towns were historical markers and antique stores.

Infrastructure has a quiet, ruthless logic to it. It doesn’t argue with you. It just keeps moving.

And right now the new railroad is computing power.

Data centers are the physical skeleton of the internet era we’re walking into. AI models, cloud services, streaming, research, startups ... it all lives in racks of servers somewhere, humming away like a mechanical beehive.

Which means if a community blocks a project, the investment doesn’t disappear; it relocates.

The jobs go there. The tax base goes there. The engineers go there. The coffee shops that follow engineers go there.

And, that “there” might not even be the United States.

And that’s the part people seem oddly relaxed about.

We spend a lot of time arguing online about AI ethics, AI safety, AI alignment, AI consciousness … big philosophical stuff. Meanwhile the physical infrastructure that actually runs the whole show is quietly becoming a zoning dispute about ugly warehouses.

It’s like debating literature while refusing to build libraries.

To be clear, this isn’t an argument that every data center should go wherever a developer wants. Communities should absolutely push for good deals, environmental safeguards, smarter planning. Nobody wants to trade a forest for a parking lot full of diesel generators.

But there’s a difference between negotiating the terms and pretending the train isn’t coming.

Because the train is very much coming.

The only real question is whether it stops in your town or keeps rolling until it finds a place that will build a station. History suggests it won’t wait long.

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The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy PART 2: CON

The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy INTRODUCTION

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Get the Details: 

• Data center impact on local communities: Balancing growth infrastructure and community outcomes. - Baker Tilly US, LLP/Baker Tilly Advisory Group. LP
  
  
• How data centers are transforming local communities - Fast Company
  
  
• Why are communities pushing back against data centers? - The Harvard Gazette
  
  
• The Debate on Data Center Development: Costs, Benefits, and Community Responses - The Alliance for Civic Engagement 

• From Energy Use to Air Quality, the Many Ways Data Centers Affect US Communities - World Resources Institute

The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy

 

Few local issues generate as much heat right now as data centers.

Across the country, communities are debating proposals that promise investment, tax revenue, and a place in the AI economy. At the same time, residents are raising concerns about land use, power consumption, water resources, noise, and quality of life.

What's interesting is that both sides have compelling arguments.

The pro-data-center case argues that computing infrastructure is becoming as important to the 21st century as railroads, highways, and power grids were to previous generations. Rejecting projects may simply push investment, jobs, and innovation somewhere else.

The anti-data-center case argues that communities are not obligated to accept every project presented as "progress," especially when the local costs may outweigh the local benefits.

To me, the debate isn't really about buildings full of servers. It's about who gets to decide what progress looks like … and who benefits and who bears the cost of it. 

So, instead of writing an editorial taking one side over the other, I thought it would be more interesting (and perhaps informative) to write about 500 words -- opinion, not technical -- on each and then suggest you read both as first step in understanding the opposing viewpoints and making a decision about which side of the debate you find yourself on.

PART 1: PRO explores why communities may want to embrace data centers -- while demanding reasonable safeguards and accountability.

PART 2: CON explores why communities may be justified in saying no, even when developers argue the future depends on it.

Whether you're strongly for, strongly against, or still undecided, I encourage you to read both.

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The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy PART 1: PRO

The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy PART 2: CON

NOTE: Both posts include links to credible sources that offer
more specific information on both sides of the data center debate.

All about the "!"

I'm not a big user of exclamation points. They feel like the literary equivalent of someone grabbing your arm mid-sentence to shout this matters, pay attention, I’m excited, you should be too! It’s a bit desperate.

Maybe I’ve just been online too long. Everything’s urgent there and the exclamation point has been drafted into service like a cheap confetti cannon: loud, disposable, and mostly covering up the fact that not much actually happened.

As a writer, I’d rather earn the feeling. If something’s funny, let it land. If it’s sharp, let it cut. Slapping an exclamation point at the end seems like an unnecessary short cut. Good writing, trusts the reader to meet it halfway, without all the waving and shouting.

I’m not saying ban them. I use one now and then, like hot sauce. But if every sentence needs a kick, maybe the problem isn’t punctuation. Maybe the writing’s just bland. 

So, I think word processors need a function that only allows one exclamation point to be used every 50,000 keystrokes and I encourage someone more technical that me to build an app that, when you read an exclamation point online, an "applause" sign will appear and flash.

And like author F. Scott Fitzgerald, many writers are very opinionated about this punctuation mark:

I bet when all the punctuation marks have a party, they quietly look at exclamation point's wife and think, that poor woman. – Dana Gould

Never trust an exclamation point. – Linda Urban

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind. – Terry Pratchett

In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly. – Lynne Truss

People complain about my exclamation points, but I honestly think that's the way people think. I don't think people think in essays; it's one exclamation point to another. – Tom Wolfe

In almost all situations that do not involve immediate physical danger or great surprise, you should think twice before using an exclamation mark. If you have thought twice and the exclamation mark is still there, think about it three times, or however many times it takes until you delete it. –Howard Mittelmark,

So far as good writing goes, the use of the exclamation mark is a sign of failure. It is the literary equivalent of a man holding up a card reading LAUGHTER to a studio audience. – Miles Kington

 Most of us were trained to distrust the exclamation point—at worst, to hate its cheery, unhinged energy. - Ann Handley 

An excessive use of exclamation marks is a certain indication of an unpractised writer or of one who wants to add a spurious dash of sensation to something unsensational. – Henry Watson Fowler

Never use three exclamation points when one will do. – Christine Edwards

And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. – Terry Pratchett

Only one thing more mortifying than having an exclamation mark removed by an editor: an exclamation mark added in. – Lynne Truss

Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. – Elmore Leonard

The exclamation point is a loud party-goer, demanding attention. Overdone, it can be annoying. – James Scott Bell 

Even the lauded TV show Seinfeld weighed in on the exclamation point:

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DEFINITION: The exclamation mark, !, also sometimes referred to as the exclamation point, is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks the end of a sentence, for example: "Watch out!". Similarly, a bare exclamation mark (with nothing before or after) is often established in warning signs.

The exclamation mark is often used in writing to make a character seem as though they are shouting and/or excited/surprised. It can also be used in fiction writing for a person who is doing the same thing but in real life. 

Overuse results in the loss of the excitement or urgency it represents.