Description: This week, we’re putting data centers under the microscope – but not from the perspective you might think. As a B2B news outlet, we normally cover data centers from an insider viewpoint. But with AI helping drive a massive data center expansion effort, we wondered: “how do communities feel about all these big buildings coming to town?”

So, we reached out to two local officials to tell us what they’ve heard from residents as data centers have proliferated in their areas. For this episode we spoke with local officials in two emerging data center hubs: Sloan Spalding, mayor of New Albany, Ohio, and Victor Angry, a Supervisor for Prince William County in Virginia.

With their help, we looked into the pros and cons of new data center builds, what kinds of community concerns tend to arise, and tips on how officials other municipalities can think about these businesses coming to town.

To learn more about the topics in this episode:

• What makes a data center hub and where might the next be? https://www.fierce-network.com/data-center/what-makes-data-center-hub-and-where-might-next-be
• AWS tries to rally local gov’t behind data center expansion https://www.fierce-network.com/data-center/aws-tries-rally-local-govt-behind-data-center-expansion
• These 2 markets are the data center capitals of the world https://www.fierce-network.com/cloud/these-two-markets-are-data-center-capitals-world