Almost nobody wakes up thinking about a data center. But by the time you’ve checked the weather, paid a bill and answered a few emails, you’ve probably used several. Your bank runs on them, your hospital, your streaming account, every AI tool you’ve tried, and increasingly, more of the public services you rely on. You just never see them.
That’s becoming a problem for my industry. In August, supervisors in Pinal County, Arizona, voted down a large data center campus after so many residents turned up to object that the county opened five overflow rooms across three buildings. Some said they hadn’t even heard about the project until several meetings in. Developers have lost similar votes this year in Florida, Virginia and North Carolina.
