Why would a huge industrial scale investment be in anybody's backyard? Is this a US thing? It seems intuitive it belongs in a sparsly populated area.

I think a large part is being close enough to existing utilities to save the installation costs of 40 miles of cable, telecomms etc (all duplicated of course). However, some data centres are built in the middle of nowhere but that is potentially then a nature problem because why spoil this nice countryside with a massive non-descript building?

I like Copenhill (https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/planning/copenhil...), where they decided that waste handling is not nice so why not make it nice by building a ski slope on it. I suspect that a bit more creativity could make people want data centres (free heating and hot water anybody? Hot spring baths? Free hosting for local schools and charities?)