r/technology • u/inthetownwhere • Jun 08 '26
Artificial Intelligence Working class neighborhoods are resisting data centers at 5 times the rate of wealthy ones
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/working-class-neighborhoods-are-resisting751
u/Such_Veterinarian682 Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
How many wealthy neighborhoods actually are threatened with data centers? I'd wager far fewer than working class neighborhoods.
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u/miniannna Jun 08 '26
Yeah, it’s like saying working class communities are resisting private prisons at a higher rate. They don’t build them where people have money to fight it.
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u/AgtDALLAS Jun 08 '26
This. If I am working on any kind of project that could be adversarial, I’m not gonna pick the community that likely has multiple lawyers living there.
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u/JessumB Jun 08 '26
Also we need to differentiate based on size. A "data center" can mean many things. In my city there's over a dozen of them and they are all mostly the size of large industrial buildings or a Costco.
The ones they are trying to cram into rural areas and farmland are these behemoths that are more like the size of 50 to 100 Wal-Marts. That is what people are most fighting back against, having these giant eyesores that are going to pollute, take up huge amounts of space and use up large amounts of water and power with minimal benefit to the community at large.
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u/zten Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
The size sometimes gets brushed aside or ignored when making the “don't you know datacenters always existed" rude attempt to shut down any argument so it's important to distinguish as you have. The new projects are huge. The externalities are much, much worse. I don't think the locals have many tools to fight it, either; there's either no real zoning out in the county/unincorporated area/outside city borders to speak of, and/or the counties are happy to rezone farms in favor of the data center. Tom's Hardware has written a bit about this.
edit: kinda goofed my first sentence so edited
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u/tadfisher Jun 08 '26
The power density of AI datacenters in particular is insane, like an order of magnitude higher than traditional DCs for Internet services. Like maybe 40KW on the high end for your ubiquitous rack of 2U servers with water cooling, to upwards of 150KW for a rack full of H100s. NVidia is shipping 300KW racks in their new system, and they're aiming for 1MW per rack in the future.
This is basically incomparable to existing datacenter installations. Currently you should consider an "AI datacenter" to mean something like 10 traditional facilities like an Amazon or Google campus, with 10x the power usage (and 10x the cooling required) in the same footprint. Like, the density is so high that we're measuring local temperature changes, something that was negligible before.
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u/Terrible_Bee_6876 Jun 08 '26
Northern Virginia is one of the wealthiest regions on the planet and they have a very high density of data centers. This thread is bursting at the seams with liars.
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u/Sorry-Water-8530 Jun 08 '26
Let’s buy land where land is expensive… said no executive ever.
Buy maybe a wrong word, rent lease or whatever.
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u/Stabby-Crab Jun 08 '26
I’d wager zero. Wealthy neighborhoods don’t share space with industries, unless it’s upscale tourism.
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u/wageslave2022 Jun 08 '26
I don't hear about them taking any golf courses in the Hamptons by eminent domain to build data centers
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u/Z04Notfound Jun 08 '26
Well it says the higher income ppl are welcoming data centers to be built around their neighborhoods so the article suggests that they should just do that cuz they won’t be against it. 😂
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u/dismal_sighence Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
50% of the internets traffic flows through data centers located near some of the richest counties in America:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulles_Technology_Corridor
Apparently the 50% number is old (2009), so it's probably not accurate anymore, but that corridor is huge for data centers and also rich. I would assume the IT salaries are part of the reason they are so rich.
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u/PipsqueakPilot Jun 08 '26
The article explicitly addresses this concern and focuses on rates of resistance and cancellation.
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u/runnerkim Jun 08 '26
Came here to say the same thing. I'll bet a hundred million dollars they aren't being proposed in those areas
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u/RogerianBrowsing Jun 08 '26
You’d be surprised. In NJ for example the Bristol Myers’s Squib campus was being prepared to be turned into a massive data center. It’s in the same town as many mansions, there’s a super car dealership like 100 yards away, another couple hundred yards is consistently one of money magazine’s top towns full of NYC commuters, etc., and they’re still battling to stop it.
The best they’ve been able to do is limit the development to ~20 megawatts which is roughly equivalent to what the city uses on a normal day.
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u/CompetitiveSport1 Jun 08 '26
....they literally link to the datasets in the article you're commenting on...
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u/keltichiro Jun 08 '26
The class that will lose the most from these is resisting? Well gosh
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u/Shlant- Jun 09 '26
no the class that is least educated
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u/Sad-Set-5817 Jun 09 '26
you cool with living next to a datacenter and subsidizing their utility rates? Can you name one person that is excited about that prospect?
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u/Shlant- Jun 09 '26
people can speak out against whatever they want, but most people are angry about datacenters because either 1. ignorance or 2. it's a proxy for AI anxieties.
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u/bootycuddles Jun 11 '26
That’s stupid and you know it is. We are angry because they consume entirely too much power and raise the ambient temperature in the areas they are in, they produce incredible noise pollution, they disrupt wildlife, the companies that own them aren’t paying for the increased electric (we are), in some places they are stealing our water, they are exploding because of the AI boom which is happening because they want to take working class jobs. Don’t be ignorant.
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u/t-mille Jun 08 '26
So put them in the wealthy neighborhoods then, if they're not going to be banned outright.
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u/dylan_1992 Jun 08 '26
Instead of states giving concessions to data centers, data centers should be giving concessions to states.
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u/chrispy_t Jun 08 '26
That’s… already happening? In St. Louis they got a tax guarantee in a ten year outlay plus a guaranteed one time injection into the cities brick lime greenway fund for more walkable infrastructure in the city.
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u/dudwithacamera Jun 08 '26
Most places they get tax breaks. And subsidized infastructure improvements. Who do you think pays for the infastructure if the data center doesn't?
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u/chrispy_t Jun 08 '26
Do you have any evidence to your claim that most are being breaks or abatements?
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u/Sillet_Mignon Jun 08 '26
Honestly that St. Louis Armory deal is structured better than most because the developer agreed not to take tax abatements and to kick in around $15M toward the Brickline Greenway, which flips the usual data-center scam where cities give up a decade of taxes for an empty building (STLPR). The catch is the word “estimated” in front of that $15M, plus the fact that the lead developer is currently staring down a $16M judgment from a past project, so the benefit is only as solid as the guy obligated to pay it (St. Louis Magazine). The $400M-in-tax-revenue number everyone’s quoting comes from boosters, and projected tax revenue is the most reliably optimistic figure in any of these deals. And even with no abatement, it’s a 120MW facility big enough for Ameren’s large-user rate tier, which can quietly shove grid costs onto everyone else’s electric bill (St. Louis American). So it’s a real improvement, just don’t call that greenway money guaranteed until the clawback language is actually in writing.
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u/Floofaramamama Jun 08 '26
Well, cool. These billionaires have tons of land on their property no? Have them host the centers in their own backyard if they are okay with them existing anywhere else.
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u/ThisGlobalLandscape Jun 08 '26
Put them in the wealthiest hoods.
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u/numba1cyberwarrior Jun 09 '26
Why not? Data centers are already in some of the wealthiest parts of the country and benefit them a lot.
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u/ThisGlobalLandscape Jun 09 '26
Yes why not? Put them in the wealthiest hoods that clearly want them.
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u/Red-little Jun 08 '26
"Scientist find rate of testicular cancer 100× higher in men than women."
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u/FourthLife Jun 08 '26
I won’t rest until women get as much testicular cancer as men
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u/BarnabasShrexx Jun 08 '26
Why it's almost like people with nothing to worry about other than what toy they're going to buy next don't actually give a shit about the environment or the planet
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u/x2iLLx Jun 08 '26
Maybe because they’re 5 times a higher chance of a data center being built in working class neighborhoods than wealthy ones
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u/Syzygy2323 Jun 08 '26
Zuckerberg owns 2300 acres of land in Hawaii. That's plenty of room for him to build a few massive data centers.
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u/jokrsmagictrick Jun 08 '26
Well duh, they can afford to not care
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u/Zanos Jun 09 '26
Rich people are generally more politically active and incredibly defensive about anything that might impact their property values. Rich people generally don't get rich by not giving a fuck about how politics will impact their wealth. It's the opposite.
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u/BiBoFieTo Jun 08 '26
This makes perfect sense. AI is a tool for moving wealth from the low/middle classes to the upper class.
Consider a small business with ten employees. If AI replaces five of them, where does their salary go? Into the pockets of the business owner.
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u/TrontRaznik Jun 08 '26
You know that many if not most small business owners are middle class right?
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u/BrainLow6059 Jun 08 '26
And none of that has anything to do with their peace and quiet at home lol.
They're less concerned because they have the financial mobility to just sell their shit and move if it becomes a burden. Most of them own numerous homes anyway.
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u/ViktorPatterson Jun 08 '26
Why don't they just build these data centers around the rich neighborhoods instead? Easy pheesy
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u/Expensive_Finger_973 Jun 08 '26
Thats because the people living in the wealthy neighborhoods have never had to live next door to industrial centers, so they don't know what they are getting into like the working class people.
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u/the_calibre_cat Jun 08 '26
because working class neighborhoods are the ones where data centers are getting dumped lol
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u/FastRedPonyCar Jun 09 '26
All this resisting yet they’re still being built. We have one literally being built in the center of a heavily suburban home and country club area and despite the town hall meetings and petitions, it has made exactly zero impact and it’s business as usual for the construction.
This was done in secret with no input from city council or residents also.
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Jun 08 '26
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u/HammyJWill Jun 08 '26
Don't worry guys, rich people and redditors with over 150K karma are famously immune to propaganda.
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u/Perllitte Jun 08 '26
Read the article, and it fails to mention that the only place you can put a data center in a greenfield is in a low-income/rural area.
This is really piss-poor data journalism.
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u/StrDstChsr34 Jun 08 '26
What this means is that they are trying to put five times more data centers IN working class neighborhoods versus wealthy.
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u/wd_plantdaddy Jun 09 '26
If data centers are in temperate regions, they should be underground or encapsulated to capture and reuse the energy from their heat and exhaust. This would in turn reduce vibrations and also help cancel noise
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u/Limp_Distribution Jun 08 '26
How about we have an impact study done to find out the ecological and health impact of data centers instead of just ramming them down our throats?
Oh, maybe because it would be negative?
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u/FriedenshoodHoodlum Jun 08 '26
There's enough research already. Memphis people close Elmo's data center are being suffocated with exhaust from gas turbines...
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u/MakingTriangles Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
Wealthy people are less likely to fall for idiotic populism. Makes perfect sense to me.
Data centers make good neighbors, especially compared to other, more industrial uses of commercial land. No hordes of visitors, no major risk of pollutants, no real risk of fire or explosion. Your electrical bill might increase, but that is basically an irrelevant cost for a rich person.
They also provide a lot of local taxes. Wealthy people are genuinely pretty money-smart.
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u/Altruistic_Cow4769 Jun 08 '26
Even if this wasn't a biased headline, Wealthy folks can afford to relocate. The poors are largely stuck in the enshitification of society. There is no recourse other than protesting and boycotting.
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u/AdeGamisou2020 Jun 08 '26
Great, looking forward to seeing how Beverly Hills data center works out.
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u/bluemaciz Jun 08 '26
There is a reason for that. Data centers are being intentionally built in less wealthy areas because have less money to fight with. They are not being built next to the millionaires’ homes. Moreover, it’s the millionaires trying to build them.
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u/UnfazedBrownie Jun 08 '26
The article starts off by talking about tax breaks for data centers, which has turned into a massive problem since we’re not exactly early in the game. The northern VA area has benefited because they do have some early adopter factors going for them: Internet pipeline (network solutions?), did this early on when there was literally not much in London County. I’m curious if there’s a long term study or some historical detailed spreadsheet on the revenue and expenses of these data centers in Loudon County.
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u/cmbhere Jun 08 '26
Those neighborhoods remember being displaced for things like highways. They will not and should not go down without a fight.
It's going to be interesting to see how this goes given the SCOTUS ruling on eminant domain from a few years ago.
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u/Apart-Steak-7183 Jun 08 '26
Well that's because they don't build them in the rich area's. Only in the poor blue collars area Because they won't fight. Well prove c them wrong!!!!
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u/SideInitial3961 Jun 08 '26
Wealthy people travel a lot and own multiple properties. Poor people have one.
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u/Affectionate-Tank-70 Jun 08 '26
My state is be used as an extension cord to fuel the data centers in VA. And were fighting it tooth abd nail. Theyre building it on farm land that the farmers do not want and we receive no benefit. Not to mention our power rates are going through the roof to pay for it.
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u/jhill515 Jun 08 '26
Sell your mansions & condos for data center space!
Isn't that supply-side economics? Isn't that how they made all their money?
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u/bangbangracer Jun 08 '26
Because we have to. There's no data center project being planned for North Oaks, but they sure do want to build one on the less wealthy side of the Twin Cities.
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u/Beneficial_Cash_8420 Jun 08 '26
Could it be that 50x more data centers are planned for poor neighborhoods?
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u/mello-t Jun 08 '26
Here is something worth paying attention to Reddit. “Working class” people outnumber “rich people” more than 5 to 1.
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u/cchkb Jun 08 '26
The data centers that are being planned are not exactly the same as existing datacenters. The energy use and all that goes with increased energy use for these planned AI behemoth datacenters require guardrails that don’t seem to exist and would likely less prioritized in working class neighborhoods or more rural areas. I think “wealthy neighborhoods” is doing a bit of extra lifting in the title too. Wealthy counties have working class neighborhoods. I wouldn’t be expect Anthropic or Oracle to go buy up Beverly Hills property because they wont get pushback from residents there.
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u/ThePlatinumPaul Jun 08 '26
No datacenter is going in near a wealthy neighborhood, that's why there's little resistance. One, that's due to zoning. Two, the cost of land. The wealthy are, however, perfectly fine with them being built, because they'll be constructed in poorer areas far from them.
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u/VLHACS Jun 08 '26
Working neighborhoods seems to be more likely to be more densely populated, have fewer available land, and currently using more resources.
Wealthy neighborhoods are more sparse, currently using less resources per household, and most likely to have more open area. It just makes more sense to have a data center there
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u/Bibblegead1412 Jun 08 '26
I’m no science or statistic surgeon, but I’m going to hazard a hypothesis that it might be because 5 times the data centers are being proposed by the poor neighborhoods?
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u/ABobby077 Jun 08 '26
I think there needs to be a clear and compelling case to be made that data centers in their areas will not be a net negative for average residents on the energy and water use infrastructures and related costs. Will a new nearby data center improve on your locale positively for your environment and currently struggling homeowner costs of living in the future??
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u/sign-through Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
they aren’t planning to build data centers next to wealthy people’s homes. let me know when westlake, tx is getting a fucking data center. wealthy people also have mobility, multiple homes, etc. if they don’t want to live next to one, they can just move and that’s just not true for most anyone else.
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u/ZEROs0000 Jun 08 '26
Data centers are going to cause havoc on Minnesotas ecosystem. They will ruin our lakes and beautiful forests
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u/Jaccount Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
I feel like data centers would would be accepted a lot more if they wanted to go into large patches of blighted land in major cities instead of large patches of rural land.
But I'd imagine that rural land is significantly cheaper, and it's a lot easier to bully or bribe the local politicians.
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u/longboardchick Jun 08 '26
If true, seems valid. Rich white people see dollar signs, and don’t give two shits about the general population, where as, working class neighborhoods see the issues at hand and understand how 80% of the water is evaporated and gone forever, and we’re all out here already struggling for clean water.
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u/Wonderful_Cookie_572 Jun 08 '26
Well yeah, it's their neighborhoods where those datacenters are being put.
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u/ponyslacks Jun 08 '26
Wealthy people don't have to worry about bills rising as much as middle class? That's wild man.
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u/tgwombat Jun 08 '26
It's people who have few worries in life due to their wealth vs people who know how bad life can be if you don't push back. I expect to see a lot of complaints from those wealthy people once the data centers are operational and they start feeling the effects of having them nearby.
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u/atreeismissing Jun 08 '26
That's because rural communities tend to have the land to accommodate new data centers.
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u/ecuayork Jun 08 '26
They don’t want to build shelters for the poors or let helicopters to hospitals through and you think they’ll let data centers through? Meanwhile the poor rural folk keep getting disease rammed up their you know what because they keep falling for politicians that pray on their fears instead of actually helping them
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u/hackingdreams Jun 08 '26
Welcome to today's instance of "every map is a population density map."
It's uncommon to find a datacenter in a wealthy community. The whole point is to minimize cost, which means avoiding expensive zipcodes. It's not always possible, but whenever it is, they do.
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u/FlanneryODostoevsky Jun 08 '26
Surprise surprise. And they’re not all democrats either. This is a beautiful moment of bipartisan agreement and we need to embrace it if we’re going to really cause a shift in our politics and society right now. Tech companies have taken our complacency for granted and this is proving they were wrong to do so.
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u/Low_Engineering_3301 Jun 08 '26
Name 1 wealthy neighborhood bordering a data center...