AI data center developers target rural territory to bypass city construction bans and regulations — rural locations allow sites to bypass city council approvals, rezoning votes, land-use reviews, and reduce public scrutiny

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Developers are looking for the path of least resistance to build their data center projects.

A rendering of Meta’s planned data center in Louisiana
(Image credit: Meta)

Developers are showing increased interest in unincorporated county land for putting up data centers, reducing regulatory friction, and allowing construction to proceed at a much quicker pace. According to a SemiAnalysis post on X, since these parcels of land are outside city limits, they do not have to go through city or town council approvals, rezoning votes, and land-use reviews. Many projects are experiencing delays because of pushback from the communities surrounding potential projects, with many jurisdictions approving moratoriums on data center construction, some of them permanent bans.

Because of this, AI hyperscalers are looking for regions that offer speedier permit approvals, and they apparently see this in the rural areas surrounding towns and cities. Because these are administered directly by the county, developers remove one regulatory layer from the many that they must go through to put up power-hungry infrastructure. Many town and city councils have been becoming increasingly hostile towards these projects, with the community pressuring boards to disapprove applications and even replace council members who have previously said yes to projects.

Building in areas further from population centers likely means that developers will have to spend more on infrastructure to connect their projects to the power grid and water supply. But it seems they consider this a worthwhile expense if they can get their approvals at a much faster rate and get their projects online much sooner.

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We’ve seen this move in some high-profile data center projects recently: Utah approved a 9GW data center in the unincorporated land in Box Elder County, while Meta is building a 7GW data center in rural Northern Louisiana with its own natural gas power plants. One Kentucky farming family even received a $26 million offer for 600 acres of their land — seven times higher than the average land value in the area — although they declined it and said that they would rather “stay and hold and feed a nation.”

Another advantage of putting these data centers in rural areas is that it will reduce their impact on the surrounding community, especially as the larger parcels of land mean that their operations will impact fewer people. This is especially important as these sites could potentially generate a lot of noise pollution, while off-grid operations can increase air pollution in the area because of their natural gas turbines.

Still, that does not mean that these companies can have free rein and do whatever they want without considering their impact on the people in the area. These companies still must go through county commissions, water authorities, and planning boards before they can get the go-ahead signal to build their projects, shifting political battles from the town and city to the county level. We’ve seen this with the Utah data center project, where a state senator got into a physical altercation with a reporter who was covering the community backlash of his yes vote on his business.

Data center developers are in a race to get their projects up and running, especially as more people are realizing the negative effects of these data centers, especially when it comes to electricity costs and power quality. Because of this, 47% of Americans now oppose the construction of data centers in their neighborhoods. When paired with permitting delays, lack of power hardware, and the years that it takes to connect big sites to infrastructure, many AI hyperscalers are seemingly desperate to get their projects off the ground and running, while investors are pouring a lot of money into projects like these.

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Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • PEnns
    Great idea! Because many county officials are easily bought and sold.
    Reply
  • thisisaname
    PEnns said:
    Great idea! Because many county officials are easily bought and sold.
    Cheaper to buy too!
    Reply
  • bit_user
    There goes the farm land, with all the nice topsoil.

    Actually, I think the most nutrient-dense soil is near rivers, which is coincidentally where people like to build cities. But, after that, prairie is probably the next best, and probably also attractive for data centers, since it tends to be nice and flat.
    Reply
  • chaos215bar2
    bit_user said:
    There goes the farm land, with all the nice topsoil.

    Actually, I think the most nutrient-dense soil is near rivers, which is coincidentally where people like to build cities. But, after that, prairie is probably the next best, and probably also attractive for data centers, since it tends to be nice and flat.
    The amount of land used is so small it's basically meaningless.

    Other concerns — power infrastructure, water use, noise, etc. are real.

    But the actual land area we're talking about is so vast there was a time when the government was literally giving it away if only people would move there and farm. A few data centers are not going to make any meaningful difference in food production.

    The land use angle is an emotional, but ultimately meaningless argument. (And it's weird how we never seem to hear that particular argument made about massive oil and natural gas fields being developed on otherwise farmable land.)
    Reply
  • bit_user
    chaos215bar2 said:
    The amount of land used is so small it's basically meaningless.
    Yes, an exaggeration. But, you probably think anywhere can be farmed, if only it has decent temperatures and rainfall. This is not so. Good topsoil is a depletable and dwindling resource. So, the specific siting does matter a little more than you suggest.

    chaos215bar2 said:
    But the actual land area we're talking about is so vast there was a time when ...
    That was also a time when the world population was > 8 Billion. Yes, the "green revolution" crop yields, but one effect of that was to burn out topsoil even faster.

    chaos215bar2 said:
    it's weird how we never seem to hear that particular argument made about massive oil and natural gas fields being developed on otherwise farmable land.)
    This isn't an article about that, now is it?
    Reply
  • timsSOFTWARE
    I believe the real reason Trump was interested in Greenland was because of this.

    Most people don't really want datacenters or nuclear power plants located close to where they live. If you do some research into Praxis (https://www.praxisnation.com/) - a number of tech industry figures including Sam Altman have bought in - the founder tried to buy land in Greenland, but was rebuffed.

    Anything just security-related the US wouldn't need to own Greenland for. But if it was to become a future intelligence base/where the primary AI infrastructure was located, then they would.
    Reply
  • bill001g
    A lot of these seem to be going in on old coal mine sites that they used to run power generators. What they really want is the electrical connection to the grid. Most these have sat abandoned for years since they could not upgrade to meet clean air standards. I suspect the people living near it want all the old falling down building removed and something new there.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    @timsSOFTWARE , you should consider that if US companies just wanted to put datacenters in the far north, Alaska is plenty big enough!

    I can't go off-topic, but there are other reasons for the thing you discussed than either that you mentioned. Dig a little deeper.
    Reply
  • gdmaclew
    chaos215bar2 said:
    The amount of land used is so small it's basically meaningless.

    Other concerns — power infrastructure, water use, noise, etc. are real.

    But the actual land area we're talking about is so vast there was a time when the government was literally giving it away if only people would move there and farm. A few data centers are not going to make any meaningful difference in food production.

    The land use angle is an emotional, but ultimately meaningless argument. (And it's weird how we never seem to hear that particular argument made about massive oil and natural gas fields being developed on otherwise farmable land.)
    Or wind and solar farms.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    gdmaclew said:
    Or wind and solar farms.
    Those aren't mutually exclusive with farming. Wind has very little footprint on the ground, so a lot of farmers have indeed put in windmills as a supplemental income stream.

    Also, some crops like a bit of shade, and so you find that even when solar goes in, sometimes the land is still actively farmed. Solar is also a lot easier to remove and restore the land to how it was before, as compared to an entire datacenter or other industrial site.

    BTW, if you don't like wind and solar going into farmland, then you should hate datacenters. They just encourage more of it, via high electricity prices.
    Reply