The reputation of datacenters precludes them due to some high-profile abuses of locals, as well as cities overcommitting brittle and unprepared infrastructure to them.

Consumer energy prices in 13+ states hiked because the grid was unable to meet the sudden demand. SpaceX's datacenter in Memphis used gas turbines to rapidly deploy Colossus before the grid could be upgraded, which resulted in an increase in local air emissions that was technically illegal. There are two Meta datacenters that oneshotted their local water supplies during construction and tests, resulting in sediment and bacteria going through consumers' taps. NV Energy cut off an entire town of residential properties because datacenters were more profitable, in a higher-stakes parallel to the ongoing RAM woes in consumer electronics.

There's been more than enough well-justified association between "datacenter" and "abuses local resources" that I think nobody should really be surprised at the backlash toward them. The backlash is so furious that it's forming a rare example of a bipartisan, populist consensus on any given political issue.

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.

>...data centers are better neighbors than almost any other commercial real estate

The biggest reason I wouldn't want a data center next door as opposed to an office building is the noise and pollution from backup generators (that may run more than expected if the datacenter has load shedding agreements with the utility)

The sea of parking lots doesn't seem any worse than the huge featureless datacenter building.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2026-04-2...

>But data centers by themselves intrinsically seem like very good neighbors, much better than warehouses and strip malls.

It totally depends on the developer. Ask someone in Memphis about data centers and they are unlikely to mention energy usage/costs or water usage and will be hyper focused on being a bad neighbor like air pollution and noise

For sure DCs can, and probably mostly are built in a way that if there's a good thicket of trees between you and the DC you wouldn't know it's there, but there are plenty of bad actors building things that ruin the area and that's what gets all the press

A data center can be a much quieter neighbor than a warehouse or shopping center. The catch is that most of its impact is pushed into less visible systems

You might want to let the angry townspeople know because they're already passing symbolic measures and convincing the abuelas they're going to drain Lake Michigan to power these things:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2026/07/27/hawthorne-race-cours...

Isn't Chicago filled with rail yards full of humming diesel locomotives? I couldn't think of a bigger eyesore. You can't plant trees in a rail yard.

The present anti-datacenter hysteria reeks of the "5G mind control cancer machines" of a few years ago.

Strip malls at least offer something to the local residents. I recall from my time in Chicago that some of the best immigrant-family-run restaurants were in strip malls on the northwest side.

Warehouses, though, are worse than data centers in that they bring a lot of traffic to the area. (I currently live in Riverside Country, CA which may be the warehouse capital of the country).

But if we're being honest, most people see warehouses as a way to get cheap stuff to them, which they like and data centers as a way to make them unemployable, which they don't like so much.

> The funny thing about data center concerns in Chicagoland, where I'm hearing it, is that data centers are better neighbors than almost any other commercial real estate.

This baseless assertion contrasts with any report or reasoning. They are noise generators operating 24/7 that eradicate social activity and purpose to such a degree that makes high-security prisons feel like community centers.

Please in your own words state what you feel is the primary advantage of having a data center in your neighborhood.

> The data centers in Aurora are surrounded with prairie green space; everything else, including the nicest office buildings, are a sea of eyesore asphalt parking lots.

You don't need to build a data center to plant some trees. There are other ways to do that, you know?

> But data centers by themselves intrinsically seem like very good neighbors, much better than warehouses and strip malls

You got to be joking. Datacenters are massive warehouses whose main output is noise 24/7.

Strip malls at least serve a purpose in the community, such as fulfilljng needs of those who go there to shop, and simplify the job if small business owners to setup and maintain a shop.