Post #1943177

2026-04-22 14:42 UTC

Please tell me of some instance where communities have taken ownership of their land and the data centers on it. There are too many data centers, of course, and of course we must stop the construction of new ones and repurpose some of the old ones. But for any data ceners we might use in a sustainable way, we need community ownership of them... How do we do this... I know this is like asking how to make world peace, but, frankly, I&#39;m interested in how to do that too, so lmk what you think.

Replies (8)

@heymarkreeves@mstdn.social 2026-04-22 14:45

@resl@mas.to Maybe a parallel in community fiber networks? https://communitynetworks.org/

Open ##3108895
@cy@fedicy.us.to 2026-04-22 14:46

It's just eminent domain in the USA. You get together and you march up to the property and tell them that the city (you) have a better use for it than their private ownership. You might be legally required to provide them a pittance for the land, but you get to mark it as repossessed beforehand, making its price plummet nearly to zero. In practice, that's only used to cut out people's front yards to make space for a road, and to bulldoze housing for the poor. But if people of the city actually started calling themselves "the city" rather than bowing and scraping to smug tyrants, there's very much a legal precedent!

Open ##3108896
@ChuckMcManis@chaos.social 2026-04-22 14:57

@resl@mas.to In the US you can use eminent domain, but that would be hard to do if you took the data center and still used it as a data center. A community could build its own sustainable data center, that could make the unsustainable private one untenable to use. Passing an ordinance that data centers in city limits had to be fully renewable powered would probably kill off some as well.

Open ##3108900
@lerxst@az.social 2026-04-22 15:37

@resl@mas.to one of my medium term goals once I get settled is to build out my home data core to be completely powered by locally collected renewable energy as much as possible. My biggest challenge is the house we’re buying is surrounded by mature trees, and cutting down trees to enable solar power seems wrong to me.

Open ##3108901
@heymarkreeves@mstdn.social 2026-04-22 15:43

@resl@mas.to See also https://ilsr.org/

Open ##3108903
@darius@friend.camp 2026-04-22 17:04

@resl@mas.to Māori people have been on this for at least a decade now! https://www.temanararaunga.maori.nz/ https://www.taiuru.co.nz/maori-and-iwi-investments-in-nz-data-centres/

Open ##3108904
@da5nsy@social.coop 2026-04-30 08:28

@resl@mas.to https://forum.workers.coop/t/new-green-data-centre-at-cat-wales/1397?u=da5nsy

Open ##3108905
@da5nsy@social.coop 2026-05-04 19:31

@resl@mas.to Data Centre in Lancaster https://networks.coop/node/13

Open ##3108906