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 one in every of the fields, a lone oak serves as a relaxation cease alongside a public footpath. Recently, the tree has change into a web site of protest, too. A poster tied to its trunk reads: “NO TO DATA CENTRE.”
In September 2024, a property developer applied for permission to construct an industrial-scale knowledge heart—one in every of the largest in Europe—on the farmland. When locals caught wind, they began a Facebook group in hopes of blocking the challenge. Greater than 1,000 individuals signed up.
The native authorities has to this point dismissed the group’s complaints. In January 2025, it granted planning permission. The next October, multinational datacenter operator Equinix acquired the land; it intends to break floor this yr.
On a dismal Thursday afternoon in January, I huddled round a gate main onto the farmland with Ros Naylor—one in every of the Fb group’s admins—and 6 different native residents. They instructed me that they object to the knowledge heart 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 on this space is coming via this area,” says Naylor. “It’s extremely necessary for psychological well being and wellbeing.”
As the UK authorities races to meet the voracious demand for knowledge facilities that can be utilized to prepare AI fashions and run AI purposes, equally giant amenities stand to be constructed across the country. For the individuals who stay in closest proximity, although, the prospect that AI would possibly buoy the economic system or infuse new capabilities into their smartphone is skinny comfort for what they contemplate a disruption to a countryside lifestyle.
Bonfire of Purple Tape
Since the mid-Twentieth century, London has been hemmed in on all sides by a virtually contiguous patchwork of land often known as the inexperienced belt, made up of farms, forest, meadows, and parks. Underneath UK legislation, development is solely permitted on inexperienced belt land in “very special circumstances.” The purpose is to shield 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 introduced a new land classification—gray belt—to describe underperforming parcels of inexperienced belt on which development needs to be extra readily permitted. At round the similar time, the authorities introduced it might deal with knowledge facilities as “crucial nationwide infrastructure.” Collectively, these adjustments have cleared the way for a raft of new data centers to be constructed throughout the UK.
As they try to develop fashions capable of surpassing human intelligence, the world’s largest AI labs are planning to spend trillions of dollars in combination 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 authorized the Potters Bar knowledge heart, its officers concluded that the farmland met the definition of gray belt. In addition they mentioned their determination was coloured by the authorities’s help for the knowledge heart business. The advantages from an infrastructure growth and financial standpoint, they concluded, outweighed the lack of inexperienced area.
“Folks have this barely romantic thought that each one inexperienced belt land contains pristine, rolling inexperienced fields. The fact is that this web site, 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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