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But data centers basically take land and resources and generate almost nothing for the local community. The jobs are minimal after the data center is built. It'

But data centers basically take land and resources and generate almost nothing for the local community. The jobs are minimal after the data center is built. It's a giant windowless box. I would much rather have a strip mall in my community. Strip malls often have local businesses as tenants (so money made by the business then gets spent in the community), and they provide services the local community can interact with and benefit from. They may not win any architectural awards, but I'll take a strip mall over a giant data center any day.

gilthelander 2mo ago
[flagged]
tptacek 2mo ago
Office buildings take land and resources and generate almost nothing for the local community, and are islands in vast seas of asphalt and traffic attractors to boot. But nobody moralizes office buildings, just data centers, despite the fact that data centers are usually objectively better neighbors.
- shit_game 2mo ago
  This was a very significant talking point through most of covid, actually. Granted, there is an orders-of-magnitude disparity between office buildings and data centers regarding both their resource consumption and their local financial return through employment. Its no surprise that the attitude towards data centers is much more negative.
  - tptacek 2mo ago
    Not really, no? I'm not saying office buildings are "just as bad" as data centers; I'm saying they're substantially worse. It is much more unpleasant to have an office building next to your home than it is to have one of the CyrusOne Aurora data centers. The data center is --- seriously go look at them --- basically like having a park next door.
    - jrflowers 2mo ago
      Wait are you saying office buildings bring less to the community because so, so, so many more people work in them than in data centers Do you think a community is your house
      - tptacek 2mo ago
        The office buildings next to the CyrusOne data centers in the western suburbs are not filled with people from Aurora. They're filled with commuters.
        jrflowers 2mo ago
        That’s wild, where do all the people from Aurora work? The data centers? Also what does the specific building or set of buildings you hate in one town have to do with the concept of office buildings
        tptacek 2mo ago
        I've lost track of what your argument is. Mine is that office buildings are not generally filled with workers from the immediate municipality in which they're situated. We're talking about office buildings because office buildings and data centers are both large-format commercial real estate developments.
        jrflowers 2mo ago
        >are you saying office buildings bring less to the community because so, so, so many more people work in them than in data centers >Mine is that office buildings are not generally filled with workers from the immediate municipality in which they're situated. Since neither are data centers, which aren’t filled with workers, you could’ve just said “yeah” “Office buildings bring less to communities than data centers because of all the people that work in them” lmao
        gilthelander 2mo ago
- silisili 2mo ago
  Office buildings presumably are filled with bodies who get paid, who will spend some amount of money in the local economy. I'm not sure data centers could make the same argument.
  - mlinhares 2mo ago
    The agents will leave the data center and buy stuff from the local economy, didn’t you hear that?
  - polski-g 2mo ago
    I have lunch around the datacenters when I go to them.
    - silisili 2mo ago
      The main point I think is density - for their size datacenters typically don't hire many people.
- duskdozer 2mo ago
  Nobody? I do, and I've seen plenty others.
- Teever 2mo ago
  People have been talking about these issues for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Life_of_Small_Urban_Spaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Life_of_Small_Urban... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Marohn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Marohn https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Delahanty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Delahanty
- locknitpicker 2mo ago
  > Office buildings take land and resources and generate almost nothing for the local community This reads like the prelude to Month Python's "what have the Romans ever done for us" skit. I recommend you catch up on the post-covid "return to office" conversation, particularly the arguments from municipalities and local governments. Even though I'm a diehard WFH guy, you clearly missed all the arguments on how forcing people to commute to the office benefits the economic activity in urban neighborhoods. Now, if your employer opted to build offices in the middle of nowhere... That's another issue.
- rtpg 2mo ago
  > nobody moralizes office buildings I do not believe this to be true! I have the impression you keep up with zoning discourse etc in your area based on your posting history... you surely have heard of people complaining about things like traffic concerns and general "ugliness" complaints around building out office parks, right? Data centers might be making the nat'l news at the moment, but it feels hard to consider any subcategory of project development that doesn't have a bunch of whiners associated to it.
  - tptacek 2mo ago
    I'm a housing activist (we're fourth and inches from getting Oak Park to be the first municipality in Illinois to outlaw single-family exclusive zoning) and from grim experience I can tell you that my neighbors would far rather have an office building go up than an apartment building. It has specifically come up.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
- throw0101d 2mo ago
  > Office buildings take land and resources and generate almost nothing for the local community, and are islands in vast seas of asphalt and traffic attractors to boot. Manhattan (or any downtown business district) has lots of office towers with little asphalt, and many (small) businesses that make their living from office workers. Perhaps you are biased towards car-centric design thinking? Toronto (for one) has condo towers next to (or not far from) business towers so many folks can walk, cycle, or take transit as their commute. And this is not a new concept: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
ericcumbee 2mo ago
Property Tax revenue, and they are not a drain on services like schools, roads, fire department, police department etc. I'm watching this debate in a town that i am from and where I live. Our choices are pretty much be swallowed up by growth from neighboring cities and become a bed room community or solar farms and data centers. The downside with becoming a bedroom community is you risk creating a negative tax base. where the cost of providing services is more than the properties bring with property taxes. I don't know what the right answer is.
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
  Opposition to data centers is like 90% hatred of Silicon Valley and its obstinate elites. One they amplified by trying to build these things sneakily.
  - locknitpicker 2mo ago
    > Opposition to data centers is like 90% hatred of Silicon Valley and its obstinate elites. One they amplified by trying to build these things sneakily. This is utter nonsense, and reeks of a desperate and deep denial. I mean, you might as well rationalize your denial by claiming they don't like you because they don't like you. Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby doesn't just pop up out of nowhere at ever spot because someone failed to do PR.
    - JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
      > Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby I wouldn’t dismiss the critics as NIMBY. They are closer to fuck it, nowhere. Some opposition is just anti-AI or misinformed about e.g. water use. But most of them have legitimate complaints about, on one hand, noise and power prices and, on the other hand, the shocking lack of contribution to local employment or taxes from these structures minting—very visibly, they’re not subtle on social media—billionaires at an unprecedented pace. > because someone failed to do PR They should have engaged with the whole community and made the commitments needed to ensure they weren’t jacking up residential power prices and e.g. committing to funding the municipal budget in ways locals would champion.
arevno 2mo ago
No, this is backwards. "Local businesses" are net money extractors. Local residents spend their money, a portion of which goes up the supply chain and out of the community. Datacenters are net money injectors. Even if they provide relatively few jobs, or get tax breaks, they're still largely injecting capital that originates from outside the community.

gilthelander 2mo ago

[flagged]

tptacek 2mo ago

Office buildings take land and resources and generate almost nothing for the local community, and are islands in vast seas of asphalt and traffic attractors to boot. But nobody moralizes office buildings, just data centers, despite the fact that data centers are usually objectively better neighbors.

shit_game 2mo ago
This was a very significant talking point through most of covid, actually. Granted, there is an orders-of-magnitude disparity between office buildings and data centers regarding both their resource consumption and their local financial return through employment. Its no surprise that the attitude towards data centers is much more negative.
- tptacek 2mo ago
  Not really, no? I'm not saying office buildings are "just as bad" as data centers; I'm saying they're substantially worse. It is much more unpleasant to have an office building next to your home than it is to have one of the CyrusOne Aurora data centers. The data center is --- seriously go look at them --- basically like having a park next door.
  - jrflowers 2mo ago
    Wait are you saying office buildings bring less to the community because so, so, so many more people work in them than in data centers Do you think a community is your house
    - tptacek 2mo ago
      The office buildings next to the CyrusOne data centers in the western suburbs are not filled with people from Aurora. They're filled with commuters.
      - jrflowers 2mo ago
        That’s wild, where do all the people from Aurora work? The data centers? Also what does the specific building or set of buildings you hate in one town have to do with the concept of office buildings
        tptacek 2mo ago
        I've lost track of what your argument is. Mine is that office buildings are not generally filled with workers from the immediate municipality in which they're situated. We're talking about office buildings because office buildings and data centers are both large-format commercial real estate developments.
        jrflowers 2mo ago
        >are you saying office buildings bring less to the community because so, so, so many more people work in them than in data centers >Mine is that office buildings are not generally filled with workers from the immediate municipality in which they're situated. Since neither are data centers, which aren’t filled with workers, you could’ve just said “yeah” “Office buildings bring less to communities than data centers because of all the people that work in them” lmao
        gilthelander 2mo ago
silisili 2mo ago
Office buildings presumably are filled with bodies who get paid, who will spend some amount of money in the local economy. I'm not sure data centers could make the same argument.
- mlinhares 2mo ago
  The agents will leave the data center and buy stuff from the local economy, didn’t you hear that?
- polski-g 2mo ago
  I have lunch around the datacenters when I go to them.
  - silisili 2mo ago
    The main point I think is density - for their size datacenters typically don't hire many people.
duskdozer 2mo ago
Nobody? I do, and I've seen plenty others.
Teever 2mo ago
People have been talking about these issues for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Life_of_Small_Urban_Spaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Life_of_Small_Urban... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Marohn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Marohn https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Delahanty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Delahanty
locknitpicker 2mo ago
> Office buildings take land and resources and generate almost nothing for the local community This reads like the prelude to Month Python's "what have the Romans ever done for us" skit. I recommend you catch up on the post-covid "return to office" conversation, particularly the arguments from municipalities and local governments. Even though I'm a diehard WFH guy, you clearly missed all the arguments on how forcing people to commute to the office benefits the economic activity in urban neighborhoods. Now, if your employer opted to build offices in the middle of nowhere... That's another issue.
rtpg 2mo ago
> nobody moralizes office buildings I do not believe this to be true! I have the impression you keep up with zoning discourse etc in your area based on your posting history... you surely have heard of people complaining about things like traffic concerns and general "ugliness" complaints around building out office parks, right? Data centers might be making the nat'l news at the moment, but it feels hard to consider any subcategory of project development that doesn't have a bunch of whiners associated to it.
- tptacek 2mo ago
  I'm a housing activist (we're fourth and inches from getting Oak Park to be the first municipality in Illinois to outlaw single-family exclusive zoning) and from grim experience I can tell you that my neighbors would far rather have an office building go up than an apartment building. It has specifically come up.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
throw0101d 2mo ago
> Office buildings take land and resources and generate almost nothing for the local community, and are islands in vast seas of asphalt and traffic attractors to boot. Manhattan (or any downtown business district) has lots of office towers with little asphalt, and many (small) businesses that make their living from office workers. Perhaps you are biased towards car-centric design thinking? Toronto (for one) has condo towers next to (or not far from) business towers so many folks can walk, cycle, or take transit as their commute. And this is not a new concept: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

ericcumbee 2mo ago

Property Tax revenue, and they are not a drain on services like schools, roads, fire department, police department etc. I'm watching this debate in a town that i am from and where I live. Our choices are pretty much be swallowed up by growth from neighboring cities and become a bed room community or solar farms and data centers. The downside with becoming a bedroom community is you risk creating a negative tax base. where the cost of providing services is more than the properties bring with property taxes. I don't know what the right answer is.

JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
Opposition to data centers is like 90% hatred of Silicon Valley and its obstinate elites. One they amplified by trying to build these things sneakily.
- locknitpicker 2mo ago
  > Opposition to data centers is like 90% hatred of Silicon Valley and its obstinate elites. One they amplified by trying to build these things sneakily. This is utter nonsense, and reeks of a desperate and deep denial. I mean, you might as well rationalize your denial by claiming they don't like you because they don't like you. Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby doesn't just pop up out of nowhere at ever spot because someone failed to do PR.
  - JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
    > Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby I wouldn’t dismiss the critics as NIMBY. They are closer to fuck it, nowhere. Some opposition is just anti-AI or misinformed about e.g. water use. But most of them have legitimate complaints about, on one hand, noise and power prices and, on the other hand, the shocking lack of contribution to local employment or taxes from these structures minting—very visibly, they’re not subtle on social media—billionaires at an unprecedented pace. > because someone failed to do PR They should have engaged with the whole community and made the commitments needed to ensure they weren’t jacking up residential power prices and e.g. committing to funding the municipal budget in ways locals would champion.

arevno 2mo ago

No, this is backwards. "Local businesses" are net money extractors. Local residents spend their money, a portion of which goes up the supply chain and out of the community. Datacenters are net money injectors. Even if they provide relatively few jobs, or get tax breaks, they're still largely injecting capital that originates from outside the community.