This headline seems misleading at best. There was, as far as I can tell reading both this piece and the original reporting in the WSJ[0], no community vote for or against data center construction. What appears to have happened is that Amazon simply followed the existing permitting rules for other industrial construction, “Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development director—because it met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development along a freeway.”[0] The existing zoning laws did not require a public vote to receive a permit, so I don’t understand in what way a public vote was “circumvented”. It’s certainly fair for residents to ask for more input in general on permitting or zoning, and even to place explicit restriction on data centers going forward, but it seems like what people want is an ex post facto law, which is nigh universally bad law.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and waiting to read an example. This might just be the first I’ve read.
> “…by adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago”
I live on Long Island NY. Here on LI and Upstate there are a surprising number of former industrial land and abandoned buildings. It’s the whole package—loss of jobs, years of post-industrial decline, lost revenue and old rules on the books. Ripe for a new industry which, like remote workers, doesn’t need to be located next to the larger communities where their work product is consumed. Gentrification or redevelopment of agricultural land into boiling data centers are the outcomes.
> “It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy …” Bozzo said.
It’s a dirty fight. All sides.
Amazon wants to build on cheap land, and not on parcels the cities want cleaned up.
I’m wondering why these data centers are such a nuisance. We’ve had data centers for years. Is it just the fast growth and number? And is there good public data on their sustainability regarding water and electricity and environmental impact? If cities have failed, it’s turning a blind eye from collecting this data.
Two things can be true: the construction can be technically legal and at clear odds with community opinion.
I mean, yes. Amazon can likely do this. But is this strategy really in keeping with its long term interests? I mean, look at the comments in the rest of this very topic. Do you want a communist insurrection? This is literally how you get communist insurrections. People are fucking pissed, and the bourge^M^M^M^M funding-focused growth-minded startup set here are throwing gasoline on the fire.
6 years of planning can be thrown away if the community is just now becoming aware of the potential impact.
It’s not on the community to adhere to the companies looking to make a profit while ignoring how their presence affects those around them. Quite the opposite really.
10 years ago these same people were worried about 5g towers going up everywhere.
Nobody intelligent opposes data center construction.*
* There are weird places that daya centers, solar panels farms, adult stores, and all kind businesses have attempted to build. Opposing a prominent location for an undesirable business is not what we are talking about.
5G towers have no negative externalities except looking kinda dorky. In fact, they're nice; they improve your reception. The same cannot be said for data centers.
(Instead of just downvoting this, I'd appreciate it if you could point out exactly what I said is wrong. Thanks.)
I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.” Non-pecuniary externalities, in the Pigouvian sense, are really something you analyze to achieve efficiency. In this case, following a 5-year permitting process and plopping the industrial activity on industrial land is basically a form of bargaining and is probably acceptable from a social efficiency standpoint. Amazon’s hardly mining cobalt next to a daycare here.
> I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.”
But that's pretty much the definition of the term. It's a negative impact on a third party. If I'm living next to a data center, and it's noisy, or my electricity costs more, those are negative externalities.
There are real reasons not to want data centers next door, unlike 5G towers.
Bias Disclaimer: Amazon pays my salary currently, although my job doesn't have anything to do with datacenter construction.
Maybe I missed it, but the article doesn't seem to say what the "circumvention"/"loophole" that Amazon used was? It seems like Amazon went through the correct city permitting/legal processes years ago, and now residents want to complain about it years later because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
Like if Amazon followed the official process here, what's the problem? At some point you have to declare an approval final and allow a company to move forward with construction.
> ...the site had gone through a long approval process, which required public notices and public-comment periods. However, when Gilroy resident Rosa Rodriguez wanted to state her concern about the damage a data center can do to a region suffering from drought, she was told that the comment period had already lapsed in 2024
Is the "circumvention" the headline refers to that public commentary periods are time-boxed? But how could they not be time-boxed?
In fairness to the residents, the negative implications of data centers was probably not well known to them in 2024, but it seems to me that (at least based on the article) all the processes & rules were followed.
But if new evidence comes in which changes the basis for approval (e.g. lets say you need to do some earthworks and as part of performing them it becomes apparent these earthworks will damage nearby buildings), presumably the approval can be revoked until suitable changes can be made (or if that's not possible, the approval no longer holds)? The linked Wall Street Journal appears to give more details, suggesting this went through a fast-track process (with seemingly minimum community input). I'd argue fast-tracking projects is always a bad idea, as is trying to route around community consultation (given it's likely more expensive in the long run).
> I'd argue fast-tracking projects is always a bad idea, as is trying to route around community consultation
Building infrastructure and housing in the US is painfully slow and a huge tax on everyone, almost everything should be fast tracked. We have some of the most productive economic zones in the world (SF <-> LA, Boston <-> DC corridor) and we have made it largely illegal to build housing and transit in these areas due to bureaucracy and red tape.
Do you think the high speed rail between SF and LA needs more rounds of community input?
I think it's the zoning rules (based on https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i...), which seem to provide an expedited process (which for large scale projects like this always seems a bit odd, and seems like it would increase the risk of corruption)?
Arguably if new information arrives which changes the risks or impacts of a project, especially if the project was initially on some kind of fast-track process, then projects should be subject to re-reviewed and scrutiny (which I would expect to have a standard legal process).
>Arguably if new information arrives which changes the risks or impacts of a project, especially if the project was initially on some kind of fast-track process, then projects should be subject to re-reviewed and scrutiny (which I would expect to have a standard legal process).
What "new information" arose aside from the general datacenter backlash that's been brewing this year?
It's possible that the official process is a bad one and needs reform. But that's really not Amazon's fault, and it would be super weird for them to set up a bunch of additional hoops for themselves to jump through. Also not very democratic.
> because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
Or because they didn't notice until they saw actual construction.
>because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
This ain’t the culture war. The public at large is fairly united on one side of this across the typical US political divides. If you want to dismiss this with a cute label to pretend that there aren’t any real concerns here, the only label that comes close to matching the actual dispute is class war.
Indeed. It is not clear to me why a community that is in opposition to something that will likely cause it to experience net negative economic impact are engaging in a "culture war".
The data center in question is being installed next to a Walmart supercenter and highway 101. It’s being built on land zoned for industrial use. It’s not next to anybody’s home.
This is false and easily provable by simply looking at the location on the map [1]. It's very clear that it's being built near housing and schooling. Especially a big deal as there's been more recent cases of exceedingly loud data centers carrying noise quite a distance.
The only houses I see are across a busy highway (101). The location is in an industrial park with nothing behind it. You’re not wrong, for large values of “near”, but not making a great case.
It's close enough when you consider that the noise from a poorly built data center (ie: most of the ones being stood up rapidly in the current AI craze) can carry noise upwards of a mile plus depending on a bunch of different factors. So a lot of homes in that area would potentially be within the blast radius of data center noise, especially at night.
It looks to me like it’s several hundreds of meters away from housing, with a 6-lane divided and controlled-access highway between the housing and the site.
If noise is the concern then regulate noise. Don’t restrict data centers.
If someone’s house has a dog that barks continuously, you aren’t going to say building houses here are restricted. Instead you restrict barking dogs, which is what cities do.
You’re right that it does appear to be near a school (I don’t think anything that contradicts anything else I said). I think the health effects of siting a school right on a major highway are much more serious than being near a data center.
Before an edit, you had made an analogy to whether it makes sense to judge individuals' behavior the same way that datacenters are getting stereotyped. If there was no recourse through the legal system, then maybe?
The problem here is that the "justice" system is all too happy to come down on individuals, while giving corpos a pass. If you or I buy a loud car stereo, we can get a ticket for making too much noise. Cities can even pass new noise ordinances or new methods of measurement that are post facto of our purchase, and we still have to conform to them! But when a corpo does something similar, the kid gloves go on, their ongoing behavior (eg noise pollution) gets "grandfathered", and there is nothing that anybody can do. Restore the rule of law - meaning equal protection under it rather than one-sided laws written by corpos - to restore the public's trust. But barring that, I'd say it's only smart to prevent this industry from getting a foothold in your community. Most are going to be great neighbors, but the few that aren't you can't do anything about.
That's because this article is the journalistic equivalent of a retweet. The article links to a WSJ[0] article (which is going to be paywalled for many people). Any time you get an article like this TH one, you should try to read the source article.
> There were no public meetings or votes before a lone city staffer gave Amazon.com the green light last July to build a 438,500-square-foot data center on 56 acres of farmland 30 miles south of San Jose.
> Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development director—because it met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development along a freeway.
> Mayor Greg Bozzo said other big industrial projects have been approved in the same manner over the years, but didn’t cause any uproar.
> “It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy without their engagement, but now it bothers them that a data center is coming to Gilroy without them having the possibility of engagement,” Bozzo said.
On it's face this is an incredibly dim-witted comment by the mayor. The people are generally angry about Amazon building data centers, but they're particularly angry at their city council which has been working to conceal the project from exactly the people they have a duty to inform.
It's not about excoriation of Amazon. It's about regulatory capture. And saying Amazon "did nothing wrong" is just being blind to the problem.
Everything here seems fine. Providing everyone with a veto on all things is a surefire way to get nothing. Instead we have a system where we have a set of rules and someone who meets those rules objectively gets to make something. This is way better.
I’m glad they were able to build their datacenter.
Everyone should read "Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development" by David Harvey. Written 25 years ago, it accurately predicts the data center trend - geography usurped by capatalistic growth.
So when it comes down to choice and where to park the money: The votes of humans matter less than the power of AI agents.
Amazon believes that the AI agents need a new home more than humans do and would rather build homes for these agents than for humans.
But of course, the advantages are obvious to them:
1) 24/7 intelligence when you need it.
2) Tokens can be generated cheaply, meaning lots of work for 1 / 100th of the price of a human.
3) Knowledge can stay with the agent and will never leave the company and the agent has no breaks or weekends.
No wonder Amazon saw something like this, wanted it so badly and ignored humans to build more homes for c̶l̶a̶n̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ AI agents. Such a sad state of affairs.
This headline seems misleading at best. There was, as far as I can tell reading both this piece and the original reporting in the WSJ[0], no community vote for or against data center construction. What appears to have happened is that Amazon simply followed the existing permitting rules for other industrial construction, “Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development director—because it met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development along a freeway.”[0] The existing zoning laws did not require a public vote to receive a permit, so I don’t understand in what way a public vote was “circumvented”. It’s certainly fair for residents to ask for more input in general on permitting or zoning, and even to place explicit restriction on data centers going forward, but it seems like what people want is an ex post facto law, which is nigh universally bad law.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i...
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and waiting to read an example. This might just be the first I’ve read.
> “…by adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago”
I live on Long Island NY. Here on LI and Upstate there are a surprising number of former industrial land and abandoned buildings. It’s the whole package—loss of jobs, years of post-industrial decline, lost revenue and old rules on the books. Ripe for a new industry which, like remote workers, doesn’t need to be located next to the larger communities where their work product is consumed. Gentrification or redevelopment of agricultural land into boiling data centers are the outcomes.
> “It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy …” Bozzo said.
It’s a dirty fight. All sides.
Amazon wants to build on cheap land, and not on parcels the cities want cleaned up.
I’m wondering why these data centers are such a nuisance. We’ve had data centers for years. Is it just the fast growth and number? And is there good public data on their sustainability regarding water and electricity and environmental impact? If cities have failed, it’s turning a blind eye from collecting this data.
Two things can be true: the construction can be technically legal and at clear odds with community opinion.
I mean, yes. Amazon can likely do this. But is this strategy really in keeping with its long term interests? I mean, look at the comments in the rest of this very topic. Do you want a communist insurrection? This is literally how you get communist insurrections. People are fucking pissed, and the bourge^M^M^M^M funding-focused growth-minded startup set here are throwing gasoline on the fire.
6 years ago when the work to build the data center started, nobody cared about data centers.
Should 6 years of planning be thrown away because data centers have recently become fashionable to hate?
So noise and pollution that makes it impossible to live in or sell your house is now simply 'fashionable' to hate?
6 years of planning can be thrown away if the community is just now becoming aware of the potential impact.
It’s not on the community to adhere to the companies looking to make a profit while ignoring how their presence affects those around them. Quite the opposite really.
10 years ago these same people were worried about 5g towers going up everywhere.
Nobody intelligent opposes data center construction.*
* There are weird places that daya centers, solar panels farms, adult stores, and all kind businesses have attempted to build. Opposing a prominent location for an undesirable business is not what we are talking about.
"Nobody intelligent opposes dovecote construction"*
*French nobility circa 1789
5G towers have no negative externalities except looking kinda dorky. In fact, they're nice; they improve your reception. The same cannot be said for data centers.
(Instead of just downvoting this, I'd appreciate it if you could point out exactly what I said is wrong. Thanks.)
I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.” Non-pecuniary externalities, in the Pigouvian sense, are really something you analyze to achieve efficiency. In this case, following a 5-year permitting process and plopping the industrial activity on industrial land is basically a form of bargaining and is probably acceptable from a social efficiency standpoint. Amazon’s hardly mining cobalt next to a daycare here.
> I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.”
But that's pretty much the definition of the term. It's a negative impact on a third party. If I'm living next to a data center, and it's noisy, or my electricity costs more, those are negative externalities.
There are real reasons not to want data centers next door, unlike 5G towers.
Bias Disclaimer: Amazon pays my salary currently, although my job doesn't have anything to do with datacenter construction.
Maybe I missed it, but the article doesn't seem to say what the "circumvention"/"loophole" that Amazon used was? It seems like Amazon went through the correct city permitting/legal processes years ago, and now residents want to complain about it years later because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
Like if Amazon followed the official process here, what's the problem? At some point you have to declare an approval final and allow a company to move forward with construction.
That was my read as well:
> ...the site had gone through a long approval process, which required public notices and public-comment periods. However, when Gilroy resident Rosa Rodriguez wanted to state her concern about the damage a data center can do to a region suffering from drought, she was told that the comment period had already lapsed in 2024
Is the "circumvention" the headline refers to that public commentary periods are time-boxed? But how could they not be time-boxed?
In fairness to the residents, the negative implications of data centers was probably not well known to them in 2024, but it seems to me that (at least based on the article) all the processes & rules were followed.
But if new evidence comes in which changes the basis for approval (e.g. lets say you need to do some earthworks and as part of performing them it becomes apparent these earthworks will damage nearby buildings), presumably the approval can be revoked until suitable changes can be made (or if that's not possible, the approval no longer holds)? The linked Wall Street Journal appears to give more details, suggesting this went through a fast-track process (with seemingly minimum community input). I'd argue fast-tracking projects is always a bad idea, as is trying to route around community consultation (given it's likely more expensive in the long run).
> I'd argue fast-tracking projects is always a bad idea, as is trying to route around community consultation
Building infrastructure and housing in the US is painfully slow and a huge tax on everyone, almost everything should be fast tracked. We have some of the most productive economic zones in the world (SF <-> LA, Boston <-> DC corridor) and we have made it largely illegal to build housing and transit in these areas due to bureaucracy and red tape.
Do you think the high speed rail between SF and LA needs more rounds of community input?
I would take fast-tracking high speed rail over community consultation.
I think it's the zoning rules (based on https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i...), which seem to provide an expedited process (which for large scale projects like this always seems a bit odd, and seems like it would increase the risk of corruption)?
Arguably if new information arrives which changes the risks or impacts of a project, especially if the project was initially on some kind of fast-track process, then projects should be subject to re-reviewed and scrutiny (which I would expect to have a standard legal process).
>Arguably if new information arrives which changes the risks or impacts of a project, especially if the project was initially on some kind of fast-track process, then projects should be subject to re-reviewed and scrutiny (which I would expect to have a standard legal process).
What "new information" arose aside from the general datacenter backlash that's been brewing this year?
There’s no such thing as a “final” contract. Everything is open to relitigation. I mean look at the E Jean Carol and President Trump case.
It's possible that the official process is a bad one and needs reform. But that's really not Amazon's fault, and it would be super weird for them to set up a bunch of additional hoops for themselves to jump through. Also not very democratic.
> because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
Or because they didn't notice until they saw actual construction.
>because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
This ain’t the culture war. The public at large is fairly united on one side of this across the typical US political divides. If you want to dismiss this with a cute label to pretend that there aren’t any real concerns here, the only label that comes close to matching the actual dispute is class war.
Indeed. It is not clear to me why a community that is in opposition to something that will likely cause it to experience net negative economic impact are engaging in a "culture war".
If this can be reduced to a culture war, all of politics is a culture war, making the term meaningless.
> now residents want to complain about it years later because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic
I hope one day Amazon or any AI company installs a data center next to your home. Then you will finally understand
The data center in question is being installed next to a Walmart supercenter and highway 101. It’s being built on land zoned for industrial use. It’s not next to anybody’s home.
This is false and easily provable by simply looking at the location on the map [1]. It's very clear that it's being built near housing and schooling. Especially a big deal as there's been more recent cases of exceedingly loud data centers carrying noise quite a distance.
[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/D5PDUa62B5weCcqZ7
The only houses I see are across a busy highway (101). The location is in an industrial park with nothing behind it. You’re not wrong, for large values of “near”, but not making a great case.
It's close enough when you consider that the noise from a poorly built data center (ie: most of the ones being stood up rapidly in the current AI craze) can carry noise upwards of a mile plus depending on a bunch of different factors. So a lot of homes in that area would potentially be within the blast radius of data center noise, especially at night.
It looks to me like it’s several hundreds of meters away from housing, with a 6-lane divided and controlled-access highway between the housing and the site.
If noise is the concern then regulate noise. Don’t restrict data centers.
If someone’s house has a dog that barks continuously, you aren’t going to say building houses here are restricted. Instead you restrict barking dogs, which is what cities do.
You’re right that it does appear to be near a school (I don’t think anything that contradicts anything else I said). I think the health effects of siting a school right on a major highway are much more serious than being near a data center.
So you saw a video of the unholy shrieking of a gas turbine and concluded that all data centers are like that?
Before an edit, you had made an analogy to whether it makes sense to judge individuals' behavior the same way that datacenters are getting stereotyped. If there was no recourse through the legal system, then maybe?
The problem here is that the "justice" system is all too happy to come down on individuals, while giving corpos a pass. If you or I buy a loud car stereo, we can get a ticket for making too much noise. Cities can even pass new noise ordinances or new methods of measurement that are post facto of our purchase, and we still have to conform to them! But when a corpo does something similar, the kid gloves go on, their ongoing behavior (eg noise pollution) gets "grandfathered", and there is nothing that anybody can do. Restore the rule of law - meaning equal protection under it rather than one-sided laws written by corpos - to restore the public's trust. But barring that, I'd say it's only smart to prevent this industry from getting a foothold in your community. Most are going to be great neighbors, but the few that aren't you can't do anything about.
That's because this article is the journalistic equivalent of a retweet. The article links to a WSJ[0] article (which is going to be paywalled for many people). Any time you get an article like this TH one, you should try to read the source article.
> There were no public meetings or votes before a lone city staffer gave Amazon.com the green light last July to build a 438,500-square-foot data center on 56 acres of farmland 30 miles south of San Jose.
> Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development director—because it met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development along a freeway.
> Mayor Greg Bozzo said other big industrial projects have been approved in the same manner over the years, but didn’t cause any uproar.
> “It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy without their engagement, but now it bothers them that a data center is coming to Gilroy without them having the possibility of engagement,” Bozzo said.
On it's face this is an incredibly dim-witted comment by the mayor. The people are generally angry about Amazon building data centers, but they're particularly angry at their city council which has been working to conceal the project from exactly the people they have a duty to inform.
It's not about excoriation of Amazon. It's about regulatory capture. And saying Amazon "did nothing wrong" is just being blind to the problem.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i...
Everything here seems fine. Providing everyone with a veto on all things is a surefire way to get nothing. Instead we have a system where we have a set of rules and someone who meets those rules objectively gets to make something. This is way better.
I’m glad they were able to build their datacenter.
Everyone should read "Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development" by David Harvey. Written 25 years ago, it accurately predicts the data center trend - geography usurped by capatalistic growth.
So when it comes down to choice and where to park the money: The votes of humans matter less than the power of AI agents.
Amazon believes that the AI agents need a new home more than humans do and would rather build homes for these agents than for humans.
But of course, the advantages are obvious to them:
1) 24/7 intelligence when you need it.
2) Tokens can be generated cheaply, meaning lots of work for 1 / 100th of the price of a human.
3) Knowledge can stay with the agent and will never leave the company and the agent has no breaks or weekends.
No wonder Amazon saw something like this, wanted it so badly and ignored humans to build more homes for c̶l̶a̶n̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ AI agents. Such a sad state of affairs.
> Amazon believes that the AI agents need a new home more than humans do and would rather build homes for these agents than for humans.
I can only imagine the level of outrage that would instantly ensue if Amazon announced they were getting into the home-building business.