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Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

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Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#161

Post by mlinhares »

silisili wrote: post #138
tptacek wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

The agents will leave the data center and buy stuff from the local economy, didn’t you hear that?

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#162

Post by altcognito »

userbinator wrote: post #123
altcognito wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In areas it's dry enough it is just leaving that watershed. It will be carried hundreds and thousands of miles away.

Decades ago, there was a plan to equalise the water supply throughout the country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power... Now China is beating us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South–North_Water_Transfer_Pro...

Oh good, I'm glad China is beating us in the path to stupidity. These types of projects are the dumbest things we ever did here. Classic!

Nothing dumber than reallocating resources thouands of miles away from where they should be.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#163

Post by ComputerGuru »

Johnny555 wrote: post #152
tptacek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 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. I get there can be real concerns, locally-specific, about energy usage (again: they…

>...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. htt…

I would have the same concerns but note that backup generators aren’t just run when needed but also have a weekly/monthly quota of hours they need to run for both testing and keeping them in shape.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#164

Post by veunes »

mixdup wrote: post #24

I don't know what DC Blox was going to put in this particular datacenter, but they are a "traditional" colocation datacenter company. Maybe this one would've been superdense GPUs with a jet engine as electrical generator causing all kinds of noise, but it's also just as likely this would've been a project that 5 years ago no one would've batted an eye over, and wouldn't cause any issues in the local neighborhood That…

Maybe, but "this would probably have been fine five years ago" is not a very reassuring standard. The physical impact matters more than whether the racks are running email servers or training models.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#165

Post by locknitpicker »

tptacek wrote: post #124
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

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.

> 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.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#166

Post by no-name-here »

wyre wrote: post #151
no-name-here wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s how DCs mark an exponential growth in NIMBYism and its acceptance - we’re already seeing city-wide, county-wide, even state-wide bans, even in states where much of the state is very low density. If this kind of NIMBYism becomes accepted, I expect to see similar broader bans against multi-family housing, mass-transit, etc.

Based on what? Slippery slope fallacy? There are real reasons why people don’t want their community to have a DC, which are wildly different than the entitled NIMBYism that isn’t against multi-family housing and mass transit. Put a data center in Atherton and I’ll change my mind.

> which are wildly different

Many of the same reasons used against dense housing, mass transit, and solar/wind turbines are used against DCs -

such as claims:

* That it would be too much for the existing grid to handle

* That it would be too much for existing other utilities to handle

* That it would be too close to x other thing (zoo, etc)

* Some say it won't be visually appealing

* That it would change the nature of the existing area

* That there isn't enough groundwater

* etc.

> Put a data center in Atherton and I’ll change my mind.

Wouldn't the complaints then be that a DC there would spoil the area's natural beauty (and would be too much for the electric grid there, etc)? Or if the DC were located similarly to how this one is, there would be the same complaints as OP case - see the photo at the very top of the OP article - it shows a very low-density area. If someone was expecting to see urban-type density, it isn’t in the location shown in the photo.

>> even state-wide bans, even in states where much of the state is very low density

> Put a data center in Atherton and I’ll change my mind.

1. You say you would change your mind in that particular place, but are you arguing that others wouldn't NIMBY against Atherton if one were proposed there? Everyone has different ideas about where they believe should be NIMBYd, including because people have different 'backyards'? And I presume your 'backyard' is tens, hundreds, or thousands of miles from the OP DC location?

2. With state-level bans already existing in states where much of the state is very low-density, the evidence seems to show the opposite of your claim that if a very low-density area were picked then it wouldn't face a ban.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#167

Post by tptacek »

ashleyn wrote: post #159
tptacek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 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. I get there can be real concerns, locally-specific, about energy usage (again: they…

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…

The infrastructure thing I get! The water thing is, I think, baloney, but depending on where you are there's energy generation concerns. Seems totally reasonable to me for local political bodies to demand that new data center projects account for what they'll do to the local power grid, and, obviously, running jet turbine gas generators is not a reasonable answer to those concerns.

What frustrates me about the new political valence of data centers is that there are reasons to be optimistic about data centers in blue states, which could move the market towards renewables and grid modernization, making data centers --- which are going to happen one way or the other --- a vector for improving our current energy system. Instead, they're all just going to be pushed to the locales who will do the least to regulate energy usage.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#168

Post by veunes »

tptacek wrote: post #78
mixdup wrote: post #24

I don't know what DC Blox was going to put in this particular datacenter, but they are a "traditional" colocation datacenter company. Maybe this one would've been superdense GPUs with a jet engine as electrical generator causing all kinds of noise, but it's also just as likely this would've been a project that 5 years ago no one would've batted an eye over, and wouldn't cause any issues in the local neighborhood That…

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. 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. I get there can be real concerns, locally-specific, about energy usage (again: they…

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

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#169

Post by tptacek »

da_chicken wrote: post #154
tptacek wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the opposite of the truth. For instance: https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2026-08-04/dekalb-and-aurora...

No, it's exactly the truth: https://www.ncsl.org/fiscal/subsidizing-servers-how-states-a... The legislatures are betting that the data centers stick around or bring in jobs. They won't. They think something that expensive must require a ton of jobs to maintain. It doesn't. They need low taxes, cheap land, cheap water, and cheap power.

You made a categorical claim. We can't both be right; one of us has to be wrong. So what's false in the report I just linked to?

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#170

Post by veunes »

j2kun wrote: post #70

What I think is nice is that the political parties opposed to data center development are actually taking concrete steps, exercising specific powers, to advance their goals. So much opposition to tech boils down to whining, and then the tech companies get to do whatever they want anyway. Same complaint applies generally to the democratic establishment. It's nice to see people finally waking up to the reality that opp…

If the city thinks data centers are incompatible with certain areas, it should encode that through zoning, permitting, utility pricing, noise limits, etc.
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