Urban Research & Practice

Data Centre Urbanism

Data centres are the infrastructural backbone for the digital economy and for all digital services in the public sector. The rise of artificial intelligence causes an even higher demand for computing capacity. This has resulted in a massive growth of data centres and these data centres tend to cluster in a limited number of places such as Frankfurt am Main, Northern Virginia, Amsterdam or Dublin. The concentrated growth of data centres in a limited number of places causes several dilemmas: the data centre economy is needed, not least for the green transition in smart cities. However, high energy and water consumption, question of urban design and lack of commercial space in metropolitan areas lead to intense debates and political disputes in local and regional planning. Many local authorities are looking for ways to regulate the boom as they fear the high energy demand, investments in grid infrastructure and a mono-structured local economy. The city of Frankfurt is a case in point as the council issued a special regulation for the allocation of data centres. Other towns and cities are actively creating attractive environments for the data centre economy as they see data centres as a source for tax income and employment growth. The impacts for the regional economy, however, are less clear, as this industry is volatile and creates only limited employment effects.

In addition, different types of data centres have special requirements with regard to the location of the facilities and planning regulations. They are part of the critical infrastructure, need secure energy supply and excellent network connections (short latency). So, the boom of data centres has a strong influence on local planning policies and urban development – in a limited number of places. For this special issue, we welcome 7 - 8 contributions that address one or several of the following topics:

- emerging forms of (local) regulations in planning and land use policy

- regional and local economic effects of the data centre economy (real estate, employment, taxes, etc.), including geographic patterns (mapping)

- conflicts and how they are negotiated (and by whom)?

- new imaginaries for urban development and how they are constructed and by whom?

- issues of sustainability (energy, water, noise, land take)

- questions of urban design and integration of data centres into the urban fabric.

References

Brodie, P., & Velkova, J. (2021). Cloud ruins: Ericsson’s Vaudreuil-Dorion data centre and infrastructural abandonment. Information, Communication & Society, 24(6), 869–885. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1909099

Logan, S. (2024). Time Out of Space: Data Centres on the Periphery of the Greater Toronto Area, in: Phelps, N.; Keil, R. & Maginn, P. J.(eds.) Peripheral Centralities. Jovis: Berlin. pp. 193-202.

Ramos Caceres, C.; Sandberg, M. & Sotoca, A. (2024). Planning data center locations in Swedish municipalities. A comparative case study of Luleå and Stockholm, Cities 150 (2024) 105063

Rone, J. (2023). The shape of the cloud: Contesting date centre construction in North Holland. New Media & Society, 26(10), 5999-6018

https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221145928 

Carr, C.; Bast, D.; Madron, K. & Syrus, A. M. (2022). Mapping the clouds: the matter of data centers. Journal of Maps, 18(1), 106–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2022.2088304 

Carr, C., & Madron, K. (2025). Post-political clouds: Suspended failure in Google’s data centre development. Urban Studies, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251355132