There are nonprofits that help organize to prevent the exploitation/displacement of low income populations while higher income areas are left to self organize. It would also have been useful to track political affiliation of these neighborhoods since it could be a political divide instead. I think people in the the $133k-$250k would be more conservative and thus more pro data center.
As an aside: I wish people would quit using the term ‘working class’ to refer to income level, its such a fuzzy term. Using ‘low income’ and ‘high income’ makes more sense in this case as it better reflects what Geoff Holtzman is talking about and working class could be refering to employment type.
I’m going to go out on a limb here: Nobody is building data centers near wealthy neighborhoods.
Which is why the comparison is based on rate …
And if the wealthy need to “resist” a data center, they have the power to do so quietly, successfully, and with little effort. Poor neighborhoods can make all the noise they want, to little or no effect.
Wouldn’t the total number affect accuracy of the rate? I think one chart in the article showed something like 700 proposals for low income areas and 100-200 proposals for high income areas. As N approaches zero, the rate of resistance or cancellation is a lot more sensitive to smaller numbers of events.
Recently proposed data centers that faced pushback were canceled or suspended at more than five times the rate of data centers that didn’t (28.2% vs. 5.2%).
i.e. the data already takes into account that those data centres are more likely to be built in poorer neighbourhoods.
My hypotheses:
- The rich tolerate data centres more because they get more value out of them.
- “AGI soon!” misinformation hits both sides different ways: for one it means “we’re making you richer”, for another it’s “we’re making you obsolete filth”.
No idea if either/both/none is true.
The rich are also more educated. Lemmy hates AI, but other upper-middle-class types might just see it as a big box full of cool technology.
To plumbers and cashiers, it’s more of a new-fangled abomination we don’t need.
Also, poor people are likely to already encounter a massive polluter or nuisance being dropped around there for no benefit to them.
Being more educated doesn’t make llms more useful. Being less educated doesn’t make them less fun.
Problem with them is the magnitude of the push vs their usefulness. There was no need for that massive of scaling. It’s all “we must get all the investor money before we have to raise prices to become profitable”.
If there was any education behind making those slopcenters, they wouldn’t make them gas powered in a desert.
It might also be the kind of data center that is being built. Cheaper data centers are noisier, inefficient with water, etc
Working class areas may already be distrustful towards large companies coming along and using up all of the local resources
Great, they should build them in those neighborhoods.
Even in those neighbourhoods they’re still going to inflate water and electricity prices and consumption.
Not to be a wet blanket, but might that be because data centers are being built in working class neighborhoods at a higher rate than wealthy ones?
Maybe try reading the article before useless speculation on a topic that is clearly outlined in the data provided?
Ok, I’ve read the article and come back. I have the same question. The only statement that tangents my point is this one:
“The lowest-income, least-educated neighborhoods resist most, even among the low-income, low-degree areas facing proposals,” he adds.
But the variable the article cares most about is what happens to data centers that encounter community resistance, vs ones that don’t. Yes they categorize those 2 groups by income level, but there doesn’t seem to be a chart saying “data centers are 5 times more likely to be proposed in low income areas compared to high ones.”
Care to point me in the right direction?
I find this hard to believe. wealthy neighborhoods near me don’t even want warehouses or dense housing.
