A brief drive from London, the city of Potters Bar is separated from the village of South Mimms by 85 acres of rolling farmland segmented by a scribble of hedgerows. In certainly one of the fields, a lone oak serves as a relaxation cease alongside a public footpath. These days, the tree has develop into a website of protest, too. A poster tied to its trunk reads: “NO TO DATA CENTRE.”
In September 2024, a property developer utilized for permission to construct an industrial-scale knowledge middle—certainly one of the largest in Europe—on the farmland. When locals caught wind, they began a Fb group in hopes of blocking the challenge. Greater than 1,000 folks signed up.
The native authorities has to date dismissed the group’s complaints. In January 2025, it granted planning permission. The following October, multinational datacenter operator Equinix acquired the land; it intends to interrupt floor this 12 months.
On a dismal Thursday afternoon in January, I huddled round a gate main onto the farmland with Ros Naylor—certainly one of the Fb group’s admins—and 6 different native residents. They informed me that they object to the knowledge middle on numerous grounds, however significantly to the lack of inexperienced area, which they see as a useful escape route from city to countryside and buffer in opposition to the freeway and gas cease seen on the horizon. “The great thing about strolling in this space is coming by way of this area,” says Naylor. “It’s extremely vital for psychological well being and wellbeing.”
As the UK authorities races to satisfy the voracious demand for knowledge facilities that can be utilized to coach AI fashions and run AI functions, equally giant amenities stand to be constructed throughout the nation. For the individuals who dwell in closest proximity, although, the prospect that AI may buoy the financial system or infuse new capabilities into their smartphone is skinny comfort for what they contemplate a disruption to a countryside lifestyle.
Bonfire of Pink Tape
Since the mid-Twentieth century, London has been hemmed in on all sides by a virtually contiguous patchwork of land often called the inexperienced belt, made up of farms, forest, meadows, and parks. Underneath UK legislation, building is simply permitted on inexperienced belt land in “very particular circumstances.” The purpose is to guard areas of countryside from city encroachment and cease neighboring cities from melding into an amorphous blob.
After the current authorities got here to energy in 2024, nonetheless, the UK launched a brand new land classification—gray belt—to explain underperforming parcels of inexperienced belt on which building needs to be extra readily permitted. At round the identical time, the authorities introduced it could deal with knowledge facilities as “crucial nationwide infrastructure.” Collectively, these modifications have cleared the approach for a raft of recent knowledge facilities to be constructed throughout the UK.
As they try and develop fashions able to surpassing human intelligence, the world’s largest AI labs are planning to spend trillions of {dollars} in mixture on infrastructure. Throughout the globe, wherever new knowledge facilities are being constructed, builders are encountering organized resistance from impacted communities.
When the native planning authority authorised the Potters Bar knowledge middle, its officers concluded that the farmland met the definition of gray belt. Additionally they mentioned their choice was coloured by the authorities’s assist for the knowledge middle trade. The advantages from an infrastructure growth and financial standpoint, they concluded, outweighed the lack of inexperienced area.
“Folks have this barely romantic concept that every one inexperienced belt land contains pristine, rolling inexperienced fields. The actuality is that this website, together with many others, is something however that,” says Jeremy Newmark, chief of Hertsmere Borough Council, the constituency that encompasses Potters Bar. “It’s a patch of very low-performing inexperienced belt land.”
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