Comment by CharlieDigital
11 days ago
A lot of NIMBY/racism/classism and modern reality of legal delays means that it can be costly.
Zoning laws is another. It's a lot of fun visiting Japan and Taiwan because you can wander around and there's a huge variation of utilization in a given block. US approach to zoning means that I rarely see similar utilization in the US.
Separate from this is politics.
I'm in the NYC metro area and we've been trying to expand access into NYC for decades.
You would think that this would be a no-brainer because it enables so much economic activity in both directions (NY/NJ). Yet, Chris Christie canceled the ARC project (which itself was years in the making) for optics at the time of the Tea Party.
There's an existing disused commuter rail line in NJ near the Hudson that was shut down in the 60s. It still has many of its stations and density to support rail service today but can't be reopened because of the NIMBYs. If they can't make that work, the rest of the country is mostly hopeless.
NIMBY seems to have a hard time stopping data centers. Why do they have more success stopping renewables and rail?
If we put the same amount of economic pressure on rail that data centers have...the US would have probably have almost as nice infrastructure as China and be significantly better off.
The public rail industry has no bribing mechanism unlike the data center industry and the fossil fuel industry. Did I write bribe? Sorry, “campaign contribution.” But sometimes also literally bribes like Tony Soprano cash in the bag.
NIMBY is stopping data centers.
Maine set to become first state with data center ban: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/09/maine-data-center-ban.html
Also, it's a different kind of more insidious and visceral NIMBY rooted in racism and classism.
It's facetious to pretend NIMBYs are as such because they're racist and classist, rather than because they just want to protect the single most valuable and future-determining investment they'll make in their entire lives.
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Not sure it's a bad thing. So, they would employ maybe 30 people after they're built. Consume a lot of power and water. I'd have to see the details of a specific proposal but I'd probably vote against personally.
Yes, see the famous essay, Nimby Good When My Neighborhood by I Hyppocrit.
Sure, it’s stopping some, but not most/all even with strong public opposition.
See: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/small-missouri-to...