I think data centers, in the areas where they are most relevant (cold climates), are going to face an uphill battle in the near future.

Where I live, Norway, we've seen that:

1) The data centers don't generate the numbers of jobs they promise. Sure, during building phase, they do generate a lot of business, but during operations and maintenance phase, not so much. Typically these companies will promise hundreds of long-term jobs, while in reality that number is only a fraction.

2) They are extremely power hungry, to the point where households can expect to see their utility bill go up a non-trivial amount. That's for a single data center. In the colder climate areas where data centers are being promoted, power infrastructure might not be able to handle the centers (something seen in northern Norway, for example) at a larger scale, due to decades of stagnation.

3) The environmental effects have come more under scrutiny. And, unfortunately for the companies owning data centers, pretty much all cold-climate western countries have stringent environmental laws.

In Switzerland infomaniak built a data center under apartments and DC heat is used for heating. There are some videos about it.

Americans have trouble understanding something like that. We believe anything short of a 3bdrm house with a lawn and backyard is communism.

I'd love to live in a dense city. My office within waking distance. A Cafe in my apartment building, etc.

The US has district heating systems. The country is very big and varied, as much as people like to paint it as homogenous.

And district cooling.

When I lived on a chilling grid, my summer AC bill was around $80, while friends whose buildings weren't connected paid $200+.

Are they doing anything with that heat, or are those savings from the scale they're operating at?

> I'd love to live in a dense city. My office within waking distance. A Cafe in my apartment building, etc.

Then move to one?

Probably for the same reasons they aren't doing mixed use prison and restaurant buildings.

What you don't want to live near the newest poisonous abomination that the whiz kids dreamt up? Do you want China to take over America or something?

Data centers don't do anything other than sit there and turn electricity into heat. They only emit nothing but heat (which could be useful to others in the building).

In America they have "temporary" jet turbines parked next to them burning gas inefficiently with limited oversight on pollution and noise because they are "temporary".

False, come up with new talking points please:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw

If these things were so safe the rich should build them next to their homes.

Heat and noise. The noise and the increased electrical bills are the main things people living near data centers complain about.

Mixed-use buildings with restaurants on the lower floors and residential on the upper floors are very common. Not sure what prisons have to do with anything.

The cost per square foot goes up as you add more floors. Construction goes multi-story to save space where land is expensive. But data centers don't need to be in places where land is expensive.

> I don't get why we aren't building mixed use buildings, maybe the first floor can be retail and restaurants, the next two floors can be data centers, and then above that apartments.

I mean a DC needs a lot of infrastructure and space. I think the real estate economics in places where people want to live, shop, and eat preclude the kinds of land usage common in DC design. Keep in mind that most DCs are actually like 4 or 5 datahalls tethered together with massive fiber optic networks.

Also people prefer to build parking in those levels that you're proposing to put DCs into.