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 of many fields, a lone oak serves as a relaxation cease alongside a public footpath. These days, the tree has turn 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—one of many 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 individuals signed up.
The native authorities has to date 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 interrupt floor this yr.
On a dismal Thursday afternoon in January, I huddled round a gate main onto the farmland with Ros Naylor—one of many Fb group’s admins—and 6 different native residents. They advised me that they object to the information middle on varied grounds, however notably to the lack of inexperienced house, which they see as a useful escape route from city to countryside and buffer in opposition to the freeway and gasoline cease seen on the horizon. “The great thing about strolling on this space is coming by this house,” says Naylor. “It’s extremely vital for psychological well being and wellbeing.”
Because the UK authorities races to satisfy the voracious demand for knowledge facilities that can be utilized to coach AI fashions and run AI purposes, equally massive amenities stand to be constructed throughout the nation. For the individuals who reside in closest proximity, although, the prospect that AI would possibly 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 Purple Tape
Because the mid-Twentieth century, London has been hemmed in on all sides by an almost contiguous patchwork of land generally known as the inexperienced belt, made up of farms, forest, meadows, and parks. Underneath UK legislation, development is simply permitted on inexperienced belt land in “very particular circumstances.” The intention 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 development ought to be extra readily permitted. At across the similar time, the federal government introduced it will deal with knowledge facilities as “vital nationwide infrastructure.” Collectively, these modifications have cleared the best way 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 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 permitted 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 federal government’s help for the information middle business. The advantages from an infrastructure growth and financial standpoint, they concluded, outweighed the lack of inexperienced house.
“Folks have this barely romantic thought that every one inexperienced belt land includes pristine, rolling inexperienced fields. The fact 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.”
