• wabasso@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Just out of curiosity, what makes them cheaper to build in populated areas? Doesn’t that mean the land value is higher when purchasing/leasing the site?

    • mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 day ago

      The article alludes to it: “The United States does not lack flat, open land away from population centers on which to build data centers. However, AI hyperscalers prefer to locate their campuses near existing infrastructure so they don’t have to spend massive amounts of time and resources building everything from scratch.”

      It costs a lotta money to run electricity and water to the middle of nowhere.

      Also, companies are doing research to specifically build in areas where they believe the local community is not politically empowered to prevent it from being built. This guy goes into some more depth at this timestamp: https://youtu.be/1CpVmPh3BDE?t=831

      • wabasso@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        Fascinating thank you. Brings me back to ArcMap training days. I wonder if they have some data layer for “local population acceptance factor”.