This story was produced in partnership with the Springboard Project at Type Investigations.
In November last year, Abigail Whittington heard there might be a data center coming to her hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana.
She had concerns about how it might impact her community. The massive warehouse-like facilities that power cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and streaming services are notorious for their appetite for electricity and water, and for bringing noise, pollution, and heavy construction into the neighborhoods where they’re built…