Atlanta’s ban on the development of new data centers within a half-mile of transit stops and the Beltline District will undoubtedly hinder Atlanta’s economic development, reducing capital projects, businesses, government services, income and residents’ quality of life.
This data center ban is counter to Atlanta serving as the Southeast’s hub for telecommunications infrastructure. Currently, fiber optic paths converge in downtown Atlanta close to the Five Points MARTA Station from each direction, including the main fiber-optic highway that follows the MARTA train line east along DeKalb Avenue. Telecommunications companies have already invested tens of billions of dollars to construct infrastructure in proximity to all transit stations and the Beltline District. Now, city officials are eliminating new data centers in the very places that have the most telecommunications infrastructure.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
There are many ways to falsely claim telecommunications advancements must be stopped. Consider if 40 years ago Atlanta banned fiber optic cables and cellphone towers. Would urban Atlanta be better off with no cellphone service or broadband internet access? Perhaps people could have argued the internet is such a great threat to local businesses that it must be stopped, or cellphone towers could be falsely believed to be a major health risk or ugly and their development would make the skyline unattractive.
Atlanta has many underperforming government services. Instead of banning essential infrastructure, the city should be encouraging private-sector investment in technology and collaborating with telecommunications companies to ensure the city is doing everything it can to create government services that maximize the lives of residents and visitors. The city is underinvesting in technology THAT CAN create safe and highly functioning public spaces. As a result of this ban, it is difficult to believe Atlanta is prepared for future measurable growth of technology advancements driven by artificial intelligence and data to improve services.
How can Atlanta thrive as a global leading city of the future without data centers present in all areas across the city? Imagine if the Beltline District and the area surrounding transit stops became America’s greatest smart zone, employing the most advanced technology solutions with public transportation and services that empower individuals of all incomes to effortlessly move across the Atlanta region and enjoy the Beltline District, creating a safe and enjoyable public space.
Fast, secure, reliable data transmission and storage are necessary to operate essential services, conduct financial transactions, engage in commerce and communicate with friends and family. Every resident, visitor, business owner and worker in urban Atlanta depends on and benefits greatly from a continuously developed telecommunications infrastructure with numerous companies investing and providing diverse data transmission and storage services.
This dependence is even greater for organizations, large corporations, small businesses, nonprofits and governments, all of which are unable to run their organizations without data transmission and storage.
Data that would have been stored at these locations is the very data of businesses and organizations that operate in the area. The ban will hurt business development in Atlanta’s urban core because data centers help businesses store data locally. When combined with dark fiber, businesses can create secure environments for their data to be stored when transferred between their business locations and data centers, and then to their end users via public telecommunications infrastructure. The longer the distance between a business’ location and a data center, the less likely a business can procure a dark fiber connection, making it perhaps too expensive to develop an ultimate security solution for data transmission.
The benefactors of this ban are areas such as Fayetteville, Fairburn, Union City, Lithia Springs, Alpharetta and Conyers, which will continue to attract investment from companies such as QTS, Vantage, Equinix, Amazon, Meta, Google and many others. Data centers will continue to flourish outside of Atlanta, directing hundreds of billions of dollars elsewhere.
The future of urban data centers is hyperlocal, including multistory data centers that do not necessarily need a sizable real estate footprint, serving local organizations through building vertically. Thus, many data centers could be developed within these banned zones without significantly reducing the availability of commercial or residential real estate.
Areas that overlap with this data center ban, such as downtown and Midtown, are experiencing the highest commercial vacancy rates in the Atlanta region, where 1 in 4 offices is empty. This urban vacancy rate is growing and is 78% higher than suburban areas such as Northeast and South Atlanta.
The data center ban will accelerate the departure of businesses and high-paying professional jobs from the very areas Atlanta wants to develop. As future vacancy trends continue to grow, the Atlanta economy will lose millions of dollars in tax revenue and thousands of high-paying jobs, as fewer businesses and organizations will invest and spend in urban Atlanta.
Instead of banning data centers, Atlanta should be offering subsidies and grants to encourage investment in these zones and to expand critical telecommunications infrastructure. Though this ban might facilitate the growth of bars, restaurants and retail outlets, Atlanta cannot thrive by myopically focusing on expanding nonessential establishments that create mainly low-paying jobs focusing on entertainment and leisure.
Atlanta is preventing investment in critical telecommunications infrastructure that would have helped reduce Atlanta’s commercial vacancy rates, attract high-paying jobs, improve underperforming public services, create economic development and increase the quality of life for residents. Companies, teams and arenas have left Atlanta for the suburbs, so we already know areas outside of Atlanta will gladly welcome hundreds of billions in data center investment that Atlanta will lose because of the ban on data centers.
Chris Markl of Decatur is an economic development consultant focused on expanding telecommunications infrastructure through public-private partnerships. He formerly taught social entrepreneurship at Georgia State University and has created businesses in emerging markets such as Kenya.
About the Author
