Atlanta City Council passed two pieces of legislation Monday limiting where data centers can be built around the city. Lawmakers say it’s part of a broader effort to make Atlanta more pedestrian-friendly in areas bustling with activity.
The city’s data center industry boomed in recent years as demand for real-time information — from browsing social media to searching on Google — has led to the need for more computer server farms.
Metro Atlanta is now the No. 6 market in the U.S. for data centers, which are not only growing in number but vastly increasing in size. Often in large warehouses, data centers need large amounts of energy and water to operate but yield few local jobs.
According to the city, data centers under construction in Atlanta increased by 211% between 2022 and 2023 — the largest increase in the country during that time span.
The legislation passed by council bans data centers from being built near the Beltline and within a half mile of MARTA rail stations.
Council member Matt Westmoreland, chair of the Zoning Committee and one of the sponsors, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the tamp-down on data center construction is part of a concerted effort to prioritize pedestrian access around the city.
“Whether it’s a MARTA train station or the Beltline itself, what makes those two things successful is to have as many people around them as possible — whether it’s residences or jobs,” Westmoreland said. “Data centers don’t provide any housing and they provide very few jobs. So they are the opposite of the type of development that we want to see near our transit quarters.”
Atlanta officials have also voiced concern over the amount of resources data centers consume. Department of Public Works Commissioner Al Wiggins told council members in July during the review of the city’s water crisis that the industry uses large amounts of water, particularly in south Fulton communities.
“We do provide water services to some of our southern tier cities and we are very concerned about some of the businesses that they are proposing — data centers which consume millions of gallons of water per day,” he said, adding that the industry places an “undue demand” on Atlanta’s water system.
The Development Authority of Fulton County’s board voted in June to approve a $75 million tax break over a 10-year period for a massive new Microsoft data center in Union City.
Council member Jason Dozier, who also spearheaded the effort, said Monday that the step to limit data centers is a step toward prioritizing pedestrian access as the city continues to grow. “The winds were pushing us in a direction that really has set Atlanta apart from other cities across the country in that we’re looking to make some changes in how we treat data centers in our urban core,” he said.
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