alt Hacker NewsThere is a much stronger argument for why housing should be built near existing housing than for why data centers need to be built near existing housing. Housing NIMBYs are being unreasonable because if they got their way the only new housing would be built in the middle of nowhere, which is clearly unworkable. Data center NIMBYs are arguing for much the same thing, but focusing on building data centers a good distance away from housing seems pretty reasonable.
> Data center NIMBYs are arguing for much the same thing, but focusing on building data centers a good distance away from housing seems pretty reasonable.
The trouble here is that the two things are related. It's easy to build a data center 50 miles outside the city. But because we don't allow higher density housing to be built, they instead have to build low density housing all the way out into what should have been rural land. Then you go outside the city to try to build something and instead of the neighbors being forests or fields of grain it's exurbs.