Why Midwestern towns are pushing back against AI data centers

No Data Centers in My Backyard

Jasmine Sun visited four towns in Wisconsin and Michigan and found only 30% support for data centers across party lines. In Janesville, developer Viridan Partners offered $30M for brownfield cleanup and $4.8M/year in taxes on a derelict 250-acre GM site, but locals still said no. Opposition focuses on noise, transmission lines, and the visual blight of 'greige boxes' on farmland, not AI itself. A Marquette Law School poll confirms Democrats and Republicans dislike data centers at nearly identical rates.

Why it matters: On-the-ground reporting with primary data that makes the physical friction of AI infrastructure tangible. Not a product/model update, so it caps at 78 rather than 85+, but highly relevant for practitioners thinking about deployment bottlenecks.