Data Center, NIMBY, and Due Diligence
I understand why the village was chosen —it’s technically in the metropolis, whilst not as developed as the core city, thus the land value is much cheaper. I am also aware of the supposed “environment” protests against the data center, fearing it will harm the young students in nearby schools. Needless to say, EMR is a thing, but not after the distance and walls past the data center buildings. That’s already proven scientifically, let’s not dwell on it. Noise is also a thing, but for the life of me, with some good investments in proper cooling fans, the center won’t cause much troubles for the neighborhood. Environmentally, that is.
South Korea has a weird distaste for cemetery. It’s cultural. But I do wish to draw parallel from it. Koreans disliking cemetery is scientifically unfounded belief. However, no one would be treated as a pariah for protesting against new cemetery. My guess is this is a socioeconomic phenomenon. In South Korea, the cemetery is like a natural reserve, away from the downtown, and the whole land is nothing more than a deserted green yard: it won’t draw traffic like a proper park, it won’t hire as many people as any other establishments, and above all else, it will label the nearby areas as “farther than suburban” from the eyes of real estate market. What about the data center? It will draw even less traffic than a cemetery —at least cemetery will have regular visitors—, it will hire less people than a cemetery —aside from on-premise security, most work would be done remotely anyway—, and it will require more infrastructures such as power, network, and possibly water for cooling, inviting more NIMBY subjects, whilst offering little to no extra benefits to the village.
Without truly addressing the underlying issues of such facility, for the average villagers, the entire data center is nothing more than a power hungry concrete building, serving the needs of 26 million population of Seoul metropolis. Truly the city befits the name, the mother city of colonies. Fear is never the issue, and even if it were, the correct way is not mindlessly staring into the fear. In capitalism we trust, against fears, we offer commerce —that’s how most explorers set sail, and later, entrepreneurs. The most common way to do this is to open up some of the space to the public, e.g. as a ski slope, or open up the ground floor as a small mall. Or they could double down the carbon-free effort and reuse the waste heat for another opportunity. Leaving the data center as-is will be seen as a dead weight, but with a purpose, regardless of its size, it will have a chance. As the saying goes, wishful thinking doesn’t solve problems; but thoughtful wishes do.
Side note, since this is an op-ed on real-life events, I have a comment to make. Do your due diligence before writing your letters. The real estate developer behind the data center project had written the company’s contact info on the card —an email address and two links, one for project website, the other to sign up for visitation. If you are a real estate developer, behind a data center project no less, you should at least have a simple website with a dedicated domain. The domain name behind the email address led to a parked page. And the project website is on Naver Cafe(read: Reddit’s subreddit equivalent), and so is the sign up for visitation (read: Google Forms equivalent). None of this sounds professional, let alone “attract leading tech corporations”. Though, on the subject of “transforming areas filled with old factories, repair shops, and warehouses”, that’s a fancy way of saying gentrification and possibly displacing foreign workers —not sure if I would want to focus on that.