alt Hacker NewsMy current abode is very near to a US highway with heavy truck traffic, a flour mill, and two busy freight rail lines. Some mornings, everything outside is covered in a dusting of white powder. I keep the windows closed most of the time even in fair weather not because I hate the outdoors, but because the noise is stifling.
The road does calm down late at night, and then the grain trucks begin roaring again promptly at 0400. The trains only sleep on holidays.
And yet: I've resided in noisier places than even this.
Living right next to a Costco and being able to walk over for a hot dog sounds like a fucking dreamscape by comparison and this is a comparison that I feel I'm qualified to make.
And, sure: Costco isn't everything, and I often want only one can of crushed tomatoes today -- not 12.
But adjacent to the parking lot of the same Costco I was referring to earlier is a nice medium-sized grocery store. There's a coffee shop on the corner. A little further out is a Home Depot and an Asian market, along with quick access to an interstate highway for the things that the neighborhood doesn't provide for.
Okay, so what you’re describing is a living condition that is worse than living next to a Costco, and therefore would be okay living next to one, which is fair. Is there a reason why you chose to live exactly where you live, and given an option, would you move to a different place that don’t have the same problems as the current one?
What I’m trying to get at is that while we talk about establishing a new datacenter or Costco or a rail line or a freeway, it often makes the living conditions worse for a group of people than what they live in. Understandably, this is the reason why people do not support them, even if, there was a little more money to be made. I for example would rather pay my full property taxes, than have the air quality, traffic, noise etc. get worse in my neighborhood in exchange for a discount on my taxes. And I’m not in an affluent neighborhood.