Unraveling the “Digital Gateway to Europe”: Examining the spatial and environmental impacts of data centers and their governance

Abstract

Data centers, which power the digital economy and advanced digital services, and serve as the “backbone” of smart cities, have an expanding spatial and environmental footprint. As the capabilities of the internet and advanced technology (such as AI and VR) become more prevalent, the data center industry is expected to grow. Despite the opportunities afforded by digital infrastructure, data centers are reported to also have notable spatial and environmental impacts —including significant energy usage. These consequences are apparent in Amsterdam which has become a leading European hub for colocation data centers. In the social sciences, notably in the field of smart cities and critical data studies, there has been limited empirical research on data centers. Existing research has examined the social and the environmental implications of data centers but there has been less examination of the impact these facilities have on urban infrastructure and how they are governed. Using Amsterdam as a case study, this research uses a sociotechnical analysis of networked infrastructure and examination of smart urbanization as well as cloud geographies and ecologies to explore the impacts of data centers on spatial planning and energy grids and how they are governed. The research concludes that data centers have benefitted from the reliability of energy grid and influenced the local governance of energy grid development. However, there continues to be challenges in governing a nontransparent but rapidly evolving industry.