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Comment by n4r9 | Hacker News Reader

> we demonstrate that data centers are an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon, with 97.5% of facilities situated in metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-026-00487-z

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“Metropolitan area” is doing a lot of work. Every metropolitan area I’ve lived or worked in has had industrial areas, too. Those industrial areas have buildings that use a lot of electricity, water, or natural gas and produce a lot of noise.

This isn’t some unusual outcome. It’s like one of those maps that purports to show one thing but really just shows population density.

Also using N as the denominator, instead of weighting by floor area?

The point is that they create a heavy and volatile local water demand on those metropolitan areas.

Industry uses resources and they pay for those resources at significant cost. It’s not a surprise when the pipes are enabled.

If the data center is built despite multiple demands to desist, then it may not be a surprise per se, but it can still be an unaccounted stress on local resources.

Most data centres in Australia (even the announced biggest one in the Southern Hemisphere) are close to a water processing plant in an industrial zone in Sydney. The same plant that supplies 85% of Sydney with drinking water. At least there's an upgrade.

94% of the US population lives in a metropolitan or micropolitan area. There are ‘micropolitan’ areas in my state that’d I would colloquially consider rural, and there are large areas of the metropolitan area I live in that I would consider rural.

I don't dispute your lived experience. But if you have evidence to cite in contrast to what I've cited, then please do so.

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