Data centers can look like little more than large, windowless warehouses. But the questions they create for a city can extend far beyond where to put the building, or if beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.
Where will the electricity come from? How much water will be needed for cooling? Who pays if the electrical grid needs upgrades? How many permanent jobs will remain after construction? And what happens to nearby neighborhoods and future development?
Those questions are becoming increasingly relevant in the Central Valley as demand grows for the computing infrastructure behind artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other digital services…