These companies aren't coming in, buying property at market rates, and developing it with existing infrastructure under current zoning laws. They usually want tax breaks, major infrastructure changes, and other accommodations and guarantees. It's completely reasonable for people to want a dialog with their representatives before those kinds of arrangements are made with a company on their behalf. And it's entirely reasonable for them to vote out reps that are overly accommodating.

I live in an historic district. I had to attend a public meeting a couple years ago to get approval to change a lamp post. It is perfectly reasonable to ask tech companies to show up and defend massive projects to the public.

A meeting to get a lamp post change is exactly how progress stops. It is why we can't build anything in US and it costs a billion dollars per mile of high speed rail.

A data centre isn't a lamp post.

Communities passed and paid bonds to have water hookusp. Built infrastructure. They should have a say in who gets access and why. There are plenty of places datacenters could build without hassle, but they want access to readymade infra, and that comes with a reasonable tradeoff.

There are also traffic issues--likely less of an issue with datacenters or solar farms. But things like housing that put pressures on local schools are certainly issues--though again not really with datacenters which are more about power and water infrastructure.

Power and water infrastructure being strained can raise utility prices and require new infrastructure, which affect schools and tax rates by extension. It can also lead to new build stoppages until infrastructure is built, which affects hone prices and taxes. There are many knock-on effects.

If it's a brand new type of lamp post that's never been built in that area before and is likely to cause significant problems to the inhabitants (e.g. power blackouts) then that kind of progress should be stopped or at least discussed in an open fashion and not hidden behind NDAs.

Why can the US build data centers that benefit a few rich guys while polluting and poisoning the water for everyone else without any major hurdles, but building high speed rail that the public and the environment would benefit from is nigh-impossible?

Usually the state gives tax breaks and the town gets double it's tax revenue. That's why the councils rush to vote yes, and $20-30M annually is a rounding error for the datacenter.

That's it right there. Rules, not deals.

The two are often difficult to dissociate. My town had a fairly fractious town meeting around a rezoning proposal that was mostly for a fairly specific commercial purpose--that passed through a basically procedural mechanism in a second meeting.

That'd pretty much defeat the point of having local government. If politicians can't get their hand in the cookie jar, what's the point?

"Lengthy community dialogue" is your assumption

Yes, rules are absolutely necessary. And community engagement is also essential. Community input might be tiring, frustrating, and the like but people get to speak as part of the process and because they have a right to.

in a lot of cases, the leaders of the communities are not following the rules. (see the ppl talking about ndas and such)

in any case, this isn't like "oh we don't want to build an apartment building because it might drop the value of a single family home halfway across town."

it isn't even like "we want to build this train line which will have some negative externalities but the positive effects (and externalities) are worth taking a hit in some areas"

the problems with the datacenters are that like (1) the service its providing (LLMs) has dubious societal value, (2) the direct negative effects such as noise pollution and such have been pretty well documented, (3) the indirect negative effects like massive strain on infra and (4) the people pushing them most heavily are effectively attempting to invade the communities, peddle conspiracy theories about "china" being behind the opposition, and demand to be specially treated because they were bankrolled by big tech, etc.

some people when this topic come up act like anyone opposed is some nimby who hates societal progress or smth and who is super concerned about that their home estimate might go down. but like communities do recognize the need for zoning and restricting certain things being built.

you need the thing being built to both (a) actually be a good that helps the community (or have a very very good reason why some damage to the community is justifiable (datacenter projects generally don't) and (b) need to contain negative externalities (which is why we don't put the chemical plant next to the elementary school even if it's the most economic option). people recognize these things on some level.

> some people when this topic come up act like anyone opposed is some nimby who hates societal progress or smth and who is super concerned about that their home estimate might go down. but like communities do recognize the need for zoning and restricting certain things being built.

Yes I think anyone opposed to data center construction is a NIMBY who hates societal progress. I want them to lose politically.

NIMBY YIMBY have no value when you apply them this indistinctly. You're for any AI data center?

Yes, I literally support repealing laws that would prevent someone from building an AI data center anywhere it's legal to build any kind of commercial or industrial facility at all. Also as a housing YIMBYist I'm supportive of massive reforms to zoning laws that would result in legalizing many more types of housing construction, including mixed-use zoning laws like what exist in Japan that would make it legal in principle to build housing close to a data center.

> Yes, I literally support repealing laws that would prevent someone from building an AI data center anywhere it's legal to build any kind of commercial or industrial facility at all.

That's not the same thing as the question I asked. That's the answer to "do you support laws that would prevent someone from building an AI data center anywhere it's 'legal' to build any kind of commercial or industrial facility at all."

On the face, not all zoning is the same so it's pretty obvious to me that not all "industrial facilities" are appropriate to build where other "industrial facilities" already exist. For example, there's industrial baking facilities in my neighborhood, but there are not industrial chemical refining facilities in my neighborhood. The latter aren't allowed. By your logic, am I to assume this is okay because it's already the current state of affairs? That just uses an arbitrary date to filter - nonsensical imo. By your logic am I to assume that my neighborhoods prohibition against industrial chemical refining is just inappropriate because we allow industrial baking? We're trying to make sense of the world, not virtue signal via "policy"

Deeper, it's a statement that is so absurdly generalized as to be capable of giving it any useful meaning. You support the construction of AI data centers as a concept? Great. How am I supposed to use this information to navigate any actual disputes about where AI data centers should and shouldn't go.

Thank you for volunteering to have a data center built in your neighborhood!

There are data centers in my neighborhood and I'd be fine with building more. I live in a dense urban area with lots of buildings of all types relatively close to me.

In general yes, but a datacenter is to many people a categorically different kind of development because they oppose AI companies. The first datacenter should trigger a lengthy discussion and create rules that apply to all further datacenters.

It's likely the general public has very little in the way of an opinion about "AI companies."

Is this why you're in the minority?

This devolves into NIMBY.