[upboundspiral]

What I've come to realize is that the rust belt states have been in huge trouble for decades.

They were living in "benevolent feudalism" when GM, Ford, etc all had factories there. The problem is that these companies effectively owned the cities in which they operated. And then they left.

Since the Reagan years we decided to export everything that built our economy so the landlords in power could have even more profitable quarters in the short term. What this did however is destroy the economies of the non-software states.

The rust belt states are currently being subsidized by the rich states. This has been going on for decades. This vacuum of power has allowed the new landlords in power to swoop in and play city governments against each other with impunity.

The negotiating power of these states is so poor that they present an opportunity for the Metas of the world to make them even worse while becoming the new "benevolent" landlords. There doesn't need to be an NDA and secrecy, and in theory the city could get a good deal out of it, but realistically their utilities will just be abused because the words "civil rights" and "justice" have exited the lexicon.

[scoofy]

I want to step in here and point to Strong Towns. It’s easy to say THAT the cities have owners, but not why. The why is the American development pattern that creates suburbia that can’t generate enough taxes to pay to maintain the town.

That’s the problem. Suburban infrastructure is wildly expensive. A return to dense walkable villages would, in large part, fix the problem.

https://www.strongtowns.org/

[pseudohadamard]

However the conspiracy-theory nutters have done a really good job convincing people in the US that 15-minute cities, or as they're known in Europe, "cities", are some plot by George Soros to... actually I have no idea what sort of crazy is being invoked this time, but it seems to have worked, generating enough opposition to liveable cities to make it a real uphill battle to implement them.

[antonvs]

A big part of the problem here is that this conspiracy theory plays right into what its followers want to believe anyway: their idea of an ideal city is one where you can easily get anywhere by car, and there are lots of highways, strips, other roads, and plenty of parking.

It's what they're familiar with, and any suggestion that it could be improved by catering less strongly to individual vehicles and with a stronger emphasis on public transport, bicycles, walking etc. is automatically resisted. The conspiracy theory fits this bias perfectly.

It's not so much that they have "opposition to livable cities," it's that they have different beliefs about what's livable.

[scoofy]

The point Strong Towns is making is that whatever you believe, you can’t live outside your means forever. The bill for all that infrastructure will come due, taxes will go up, people who still can will move away, and the town will start falling apart.

[antonvs]

I pointed out why it was easy for that conspiracy theory to take hold.

Whether the people who believe it are going to experience consequences in future isn't relevant to that.

[pseudohadamard]

Yeah, good point. I was astounded when I lived in the US that it was impossible to get from my temporary accommodation to the place I worked, about 300m away, without driving. I eventually found a place to rent on the one single bus route that served the area. The rental agent treated me with the same level of patience that you use with slightly crazy people.

[antonvs]

Certainly US walkability is terrible in general, but what you describe is a fairly extreme scenario. Was it that you had to cross an interstate highway or something like that?

I'm an immigrant to the US - currently looking to emigrate again for obvious reasons! - and I've done a good amount of walking or taking public transit. Walking on the shoulder of strips (i.e. highways with traffic lights and shopping) is not pleasant, but it's doable. Crossing those strips is usually possible at traffic lights.

The wildest thing is that even in smallish towns where you might expect that walking would be supported, it isn't. Town planners generally seem not to consider it at all, at best you get some sidewalks outside shopping areas and then everything else the best you get is a shoulder, and the worst is nothing at all so you're just in the road with the cars.

The US is literally, collectively insane, and what it's going through now is just a natural consequence of that.

[reactordev]

Sadly this is true. Already, resources have been sucked up by data centers and local towns have to use bottled water and pay 4x electric bill rates.

https://www.pecva.org/work/energy-work/data-centers-industry...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2026/01/11/ameri...

https://archive.ph/9rY9Z

[OGEnthusiast]

IMO it's just regression to the mean. The Rust Belt cities benefitted from being in the right place at the right time (post-WWII US during industrialization) for a few decades, but post-globalization they are just one of infinity undifferentiated land masses competing on cost of land and power (vs e.g. SF or NYC which compete largely on access to social networks and institutions).

[kjkjadksj]

What is surprising is that to me where you see datacenter build out hand over fist isn’t really in the midwest where one might assume due to low land costs. Surprisingly, the heart of the datacenter buildout seems to be northern virginia. Not exactly a cheap land sort of former one horse town.

[michaelt]

Cheap land is nice, but it's not the only concern. Data centres make a lot more money per square foot than things like farming, after all.

You also want cheap, reliable power. Ideally eco-friendly. And you want backbone connectivity, of course. Local suppliers who know the construction and maintenance needs of a data centre. No earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, or tornadoes. A local government that won't tax you too much, and that won't get upset when you employ very few people.

[ben_w]

I know why I, personally, consider eco-friendly power to be ideal; but why would the builder of a DC care?

[michaelt]

So they can put it on a page like [1] and [2]

Most large companies impose certain costs on society, and have to manage their reputation. Often it's cheaper to improve public opinion in a peripheral area than to address deep-seated problems.

Putting a data centre close to a hydroelectric dam helps offset your product's impact on users' mental health, your disregard for competition law, etc.

[1] https://datacenters.google/operating-sustainably/ [2] https://sustainability.atmeta.com/data-centers/

[ben_w]

I don't buy that reasoning, even with that desire to manage their reputation:

Those lists are the companies marking their own homework and congratulating themselves as PR, AKA "greenwashing". They can do that just fine by spinning a single metric of their choice where they do less-badly than their pick of mean, median, and mode of whoever else they want to compare themselves against, they don't actually need to be genuinely eco-friendly at anything.

[expedition32]

Latency I guess? I'm seeing this in my own country were everyone wants to be close to AMSIX. Which as you may have guessed also happens to be the most expensive and densely populated part of the country...

[wat10000]

Yep, Northern Virginia gets you close to the BosWash megalopolis and pretty close to better than half of the US population. It also gives you access to a highly educated workforce and pretty much no natural disasters of note.

There's also network (pun intended) effects. Northern Virginia has been a major internet hub for a long time, with the first non-government peering point and a bunch of telecom companies, including AOL.

The data center land isn't that expensive anyway. Northern Virginia can be tremendously expensive, but the data centers are built out in the relative sticks. I'm sure the land would be cheaper in Wyoming, but it's cheap enough.

[pseudohadamard]

I was thinking of a slightly different incentiviser, you're right next to the county's largest collection of bought-and-paid-for politicians, if you need the rules bent a little, or a lot, you can point to your data centre off in the distance and remind them what you're paying them for.

[ahi]

Considering the capital costs in fitting out these datacenters, the land being 10x more expensive doesn't move the needle much on total cost.

[expedition32]

Unfortunately for the rust belt states data centers don't bring in a lot of jobs.

No well educated highly paid person wants to live in the middle of nowhere. Wisconsin will never be Seattle, Boston or NYC.

[rvba]

They dont have any negotiating power -> it is a race to the bottom

[jadbox]

Absolutely this. It's no wonder why these states are also culturally grounded in terms of "command and hierarchy". If GM fires you, it's end of the line for you.. good luck serving hot meals at Cracker Barrel.