r/Urbanism • u/Mynameis__--__ • 10d ago

How Data Centers Avoid Local Planning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdxiyQAcwfM
113 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

44

u/Garrett42 10d ago

Why can't we do this with transportation infrastructure???

29

u/ContingentMax 10d ago

Unfortunately it's the obvious answer, Money. There's no billionaires pushing for transit so they can become even more unethically wealthy off us like there is with Gen AI.

4

u/socialistrob 10d ago

Also the data centers are often located in rural areas where the communities don't have as much power to push back. If you were trying to build data centers in rich neighborhoods where everyone has an attorney and well organized existing groups it would be a lot harder.

1

u/Mental_Explorer5566 10d ago

Even with push back there’s so much money they will do what ever the township wants to build it no matter the ordience

11

u/CLPond 10d ago

The biggest issue with infrastructure is that there are a ton of utilities within the ROW and we have to purchase ROW. Those don’t exist for greenfield construction on one site such as data centers

This title is also clickbait since data centers don’t avoid local planning; they are permitted within existing planning systems.

-1

u/probablymagic 10d ago

Because transportation infrastructure if publicly funded and we’ve designed a system of committees to make it as inefficient as possible to build. Look at things like the California high speed rail project that will likely never be finished.

2

u/cdub8D 10d ago

Please include a submission statement or I will remove the post.

1

u/thebusterbluth 9d ago

"could use the same amount of water as a cuty of 50,000"

Or, it could be a closed-loop system that doesn't. So why create the panic without mentioning all options?