The NIMBYs Who Killed the Internet — And What They Cost Us
Every generation has communities that blocked the next wave of progress. Here's what happened to them.
In the 1850s, the residents of Zanesville, Ohio fought to keep the railroad out of their town. The noise, the smoke, the disruption to their quiet farming community — it was all too much. The railroad went to Columbus instead. Columbus became the state capital and one of America's fastest-growing cities. Zanesville became a footnote.
Every generation produces communities that say "not here" to transformative infrastructure. And every generation, the pattern repeats: the infrastructure gets built somewhere else, the "somewhere else" prospers, and the community that said no spends decades wondering what happened to their economy.
Data centers are this generation's railroad. And the communities blocking them are writing the same story Zanesville wrote 170 years ago.
The Pattern
The arguments against every major infrastructure wave in American history sound almost identical. Only the nouns change.
The Railroad
The fear: "Trains will scare the livestock, bring crime, destroy our rural way of life."
Who said no: Dozens of towns across Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania fought to reroute rail lines away from their communities.
What happened: Towns that got rail connections — Chicago, Indianapolis, Columbus — became major cities. Towns that blocked them became ghost towns or tourist curiosities. The economic geography of America was permanently shaped by which communities said yes.
The Interstate Highway
The fear: "Highways will destroy our downtown, bring noise and pollution, devalue our neighborhoods."
Who said no: Communities that successfully fought highway routing through or near their towns — most famously, several towns along original Route 66 that lobbied to be bypassed by I-40.
What happened: Towns bypassed by the interstate lost their economic lifeblood. Motels closed. Gas stations shuttered. Restaurants disappeared. The communities that fought for highway access became the suburbs and exurbs that powered the postwar boom.
The Airport
The fear: "Jet noise will destroy our quality of life, planes will crash into neighborhoods, property values will collapse."
Who said no: Multiple communities in the Chicago, Dallas, and Denver metro areas fought proposed airport sites for decades.
What happened: DFW Airport opened in 1974 after years of opposition. The region around it became one of the fastest-growing economic corridors in America. The communities closest to the airport — Irving, Grapevine, Euless — saw property values and commercial investment surge, not collapse.
Fracking and the Shale Revolution
The fear: "Fracking will poison our groundwater, cause earthquakes, destroy our land."
Who said no: New York State banned fracking entirely in 2014. Several Colorado and California counties passed local moratoriums.
What happened: Pennsylvania and North Dakota said yes. The Marcellus Shale and Bakken formations created an economic boom that transformed some of the poorest counties in America into some of the wealthiest. New York's Southern Tier — sitting on the same shale formation as Pennsylvania — watched its neighbor prosper while its own economy stagnated.
The Loudoun County Proof
If there is a single data point that demolishes the NIMBY argument against data centers, it is Loudoun County, Virginia.
In the early 2000s, Loudoun County made a strategic decision to welcome data centers. The county rezoned land, streamlined permitting, and actively courted hyperscale operators. Today, Loudoun County is:
Loudoun County's school system is funded largely by data center property taxes. Its roads are well-maintained. Its emergency services are well-staffed. Property values in Loudoun County have not collapsed — they have risen faster than nearly every county in America. The median home value exceeds $650,000.
The data centers did not destroy Loudoun County. They built it. And the residents who live there — many of whom moved to the county precisely because of the schools and services that data center revenue funds — are the living rebuttal to every NIMBY argument being made in planning hearings across the country.
The Communities That Said No
Now compare Loudoun County to the communities that have blocked data centers in recent years.
In Cascade Locks, Oregon, voters recalled two Port Authority officials in June 2023 for supporting a $100 million data center project. The project left. The tax revenue left. The 50 permanent jobs left. Cascade Locks is still a town of 1,300 people with a median household income of $43,000.
In Warrenton, Virginia, residents voted out all town council members who supported Amazon's proposed data center in November 2024. The project moved elsewhere. Warrenton did not become safer, quieter, or wealthier. It simply lost the investment.
In Prince William County, Virginia, the $24.7 billion Prince William Digital Gateway project was halted after coordinated legal and activist pressure — one of the largest infrastructure losses in American history. That investment will be built. The question is whether it will be built in Virginia or in Abu Dhabi.
"When a community says 'not here,' it doesn't eliminate the demand. It relocates the prosperity. The data center gets built somewhere else. So do the jobs, the tax revenue, and the schools it would have funded."
The Choice Every Community Faces
History does not record the names of the towns that blocked the railroad. It records the names of the towns that welcomed it. Chicago, not Zanesville. Dallas-Fort Worth, not the communities that fought the airport. Pennsylvania, not New York.
The communities being asked to host data centers today face the same choice every transformative infrastructure generation presents: accept the disruption that comes with growth, or preserve a status quo that was already declining.
Bastrop County, Texas. Culpeper County, Virginia. Surry County, North Carolina. These communities have the opportunity to be the next Loudoun County — the places that said yes when everyone else was saying no, and built a generation of prosperity on the decision.
Or they can be the next Zanesville. A footnote in a history that moved on without them.
The Bottom Line
Every generation has its NIMBYs, and every generation, the pattern is the same: the infrastructure gets built somewhere, and the communities that host it prosper while the communities that block it decline. Loudoun County is the wealthiest county in America because it said yes to data centers. Cascade Locks recalled its leaders for saying yes — and is still a town of 1,300 people earning $43,000 a year. History is not kind to communities that say "not here."