Short addendum to my previous tirades on NIMBYs blocking data centers: I mostly focus on these being blocked in the cities because, well, I live in a city and I hear what city-folk say about why they are NIMBY about data centers, houses, etc.

But to be true, NIMBYism is universal. I was visiting my aunt a little while ago on the farm she owns with her daughter. Being bored, I picked up the newspaper on her table. Now, the fact that there was a physical newspaper on the table should let you know just how old, and old-fashioned, my aunt is. But the cover story was interesting to me: a proposal to build a large new solar power plant in the area, one that could power much of the nearby city and beyond.

A new solar power plant is no bad thing: it means jobs for construction, jobs for maintenance, and it lowers power costs making everyone’s lives cheaper. Cheap power also tends to attract other power-intensive jobs, bringing even more jobs and wages to a traditional farming area that has been very stagnant for 50 years.

But the locals were not having it. They didn’t like the glare that the panels might give off, they said microplastics and metals would run off during the rain and pollute their aquifer. They said it would take up too much space and be an eyesore, and that it wouldn’t even help them anyway. In short, they were NIMBYs.

Because that’s the NIMBY playbook on everything from houses, to data centers, to power plants:

• This thing competes with me for amenities and raises their prices.
  • Houses bring residents who use up space in doctor’s offices, schools, and parks, potentially overcrowding them for current residents.
  • Houses and data centers use water and electricity, competing with local residents.
  • All three of these use up space, which locals may wish to use for other things
• This thing isn’t something I want
  • If you don’t like the new house, you don’t have to live there. But someone else might want it, why not give them a chance?
  • If you don’t like data centers, well just don’t build one then. This one isn’t being built with your money, so let it be built.
  • If you don’t like solar power, well tough cookie. America needs more power, and you use power, so you’ve no right to complain in my eyes.
• This thing is ugly
  • This complaint is pernicious because anything looks ugly when you already don’t like it for other reasons. There is no amount of facading or art deco that would make some people accept a data center or a solar farm as “beautiful.”
• This thing will reduce my quality of life
  • The residents of a new apartment block will likely be noisier than the residents of the surrounding houses. They will stay up late, have parties, and invite over their friends. Those friends will then park on the street, reducing the street parking that current residents have come to enjoy. In fact, noise complaints seem to be *the most common complaint* I see over new developments when I listen in to my local planning meetings.
  • The recent buzz is that data centers also create noise. Whoopdidoo.
  • And of course solar panels are indeed made of plastics and some metals. But while there is no evidence that they leach out and contaminate the aquifers, there is no amount of evidence *against this* that would convince the NIMBYs of my aunt’s local town.

I don’t know if that solar power plant will ever get built. The local farmers seemed firmly against it, although the state and municipality were for it so they could well over-ride local demands. Still, I wanted to just point out that this is a textbook case of NIMBYism, and in my eyes these NIMBYs are all the same.