In Northern Virginia, Amazon data centers have been built close to homes in Aldie, and companies continue seeking new sites, including near Manassas National Battlefield Park. Activists warn residents are left to fight development alone as land is displaced an
On what was once farmland, data center construction has moved in fast and close—so close that in Aldie, Virginia, Amazon data centers have been built as close as 50 feet from houses.
Northern Virginia has become a front line in a larger push to expand computing capacity.. Virginia now has more data centers than anywhere else in the world. and companies are pressing to build additional facilities even around some of the most historic land in the country: the Manassas National Battlefield Park.
For residents and organizers, the dispute is not abstract.. They describe a fear that the public doesn’t fully understand what is being taken and what changes follow.. Elena Schlossberg. a leading activist against data center development in Northern Virginia. said. “The amount of surface land that is being displaced by data centers and everything that goes with that. I don’t think people understand what’s really happening.”
Schlossberg also framed the conflict in terms of a familiar kind of community pushback that has hardened into something harder to live with.. “There’s NIMBY and there’s NOTE. and NOTE is ‘not over there. either. ’” she said—capturing the way opposition can spread when new proposals appear to shift the problem to the next neighborhood rather than resolve it.
The pattern in Northern Virginia is consistent with that complaint: major new data center sites are being pursued in ever tighter proximity to homes and even to closely held historic ground. while residents attempting to slow or stop the expansion say they’re facing displacement pressures they believe the public has trouble grasping.
At this point, the fight over where data centers go is landing squarely on local communities—especially when the scale and siting decisions keep pushing development into places that residents already see as part of their daily lives and shared national heritage.
Virginia data centers Aldie Amazon Manassas National Battlefield Park land displacement community opposition