Should I not be able to use youtube or order online because we don't have a DC right next door?
It is all about how you plan, build etc how good you are.
There's no reason they can't be economic accelerators for the towns they are in.
In your country things may be proceeding differently, but that's the story here.
I believe in many areas this is the kind of infrastructure investment that regulated utilities can easily pass onto existing rate payers, which is where the problem/narrative comes from in the first place. So your theory doesn't match the actual results people are complaining about.
Same thing when datacenters take power generation into their own hands and build new gas turbines rather than solar/batteries or paying to expedite grid construction. And I'm willing to believe these problems happen in a minority of cases, but the problem is that they seemingly do happen and existing residents are left without recourse.
This is talking about the capital assets themselves, which are of course separate from regular maintenance like tree trimming.
About the only thing I can think of is something like a bulk of the grid infrastructure was built out 30/40/50/whatever years ago, and is now all reaching its expected lifetime all at once, and perhaps some types of equipment are strictly retired at the end of their lifespan lest they fail catastrophically.