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Comment by enaaem

3 hours ago

American zoning is weird. You can't walk to a grocery store, but you can walk to a data center.

You cant walk to a data center either

  • Literally in the article is a proposed development that is (easily) walkable from residential houses.

  • You obviously have never been to Ashburn, Virginia. Look up Lord Fairfax Pl. in Ashburn, VA on Google Maps and note the data center just outside that neighborhood.

Mwah, that depends on what you consider walking distance. I remember walking back from a Rite-Aid in SF when attending an IETF conference, entering the conference hotel and being asked by other attendees 'where the hell I managed to find a Rite-Aid here'? Well, it may have been a 1.5 km walk but it was there, sure enough. I did not look it up beforehand, just started walking out of the centre and found one. Sure, if you only look in the local block you won't find one but then again if I walk 1.5 km from where I live I only find more trees so everything is relative.

The zoning for that lot would allow a grocery store. Not being able to walk to the grocery store isn’t a zoning issue in this case.

What? This depends entirely on where you are. And for far more people, I would expect they can far more easily walk to a grocery store than they can any sort of industrial thing.

  • I have two grocery stores within 5 miles of me. Both paths to the grocery store take me by an Amazon warehouse before I arrive at the grocery

Whats really frustrating is how silicon valley fights tooth and nail to stop housing from being built in their community only to force these data centers onto everybody else's communities.

  • Just makes you wonder how many of the SV types are wanting to use AI as the final solution for the poor.

    • Many of them, like Thiel and Ellison, are basically all but saying that sort of thing already. I'd give it under a year before one of them lets it slip.

It all makes sense once you realise the purpose is to maximise the amount of car storage. You're allowed to build car storage in every zone. Many zones even have a minimum amount of car storage required to accompany anything else you want to build.