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
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