The Jakarta Comparison — Twice the Metro Area in Server Racks

Fourteen Thousand Five Hundred

The land number in the UN report is the one that sounds like a joke until you look at a fence.

By 2030, the authors said, the land footprint associated with generating the campuses' electricity — not just the halls, the generation and the wires and the stuff that makes the halls possible — could exceed 14,500 square kilometers. They said that was roughly twice the Jakarta metropolitan area, a place with more than thirty-two million people. For 2025 they used about 6,900 square kilometers, something like four and a half Greater Londons.

I have never been to Jakarta. I have been to a data-center campus that was proud of how little you could see from the road. The pride was a berm and a setback and a sign that said nothing. The land was still land. The land had been a field, or a warehouse park, or a promise to a county that the tax base would arrive before the transformer.

A facilities director named Burt once told me, as if I had asked, that the building was the small part. The building is the postcard. The postcard does not include the substation, the transmission tap, the laydown yard, the diesel farm, the parking for the people who will never be allowed to say what they do, the solar field that makes the postcard green, the access road that makes the fire marshal happy. Add those up across a planet and you get a metro area that does not have a mayor.

The Tour I Did Not Get

I asked for a tour. I was still in the industry, which I thought would help. It did not help. I got a parking lot and a badge printer that did not print and a security person who was kind and bored. He said visitors were a risk. I said I had signed the paper. He said the paper was not the risk. The risk was a photograph of a cooling tower that a competitor could read like a recipe.

I sat in the rental car and looked at the fence. The fence was serious. The grass was serious. A truck went in with a name I will not typeset. Another truck came out empty. That was the tour. I wrote berm on a receipt. Merritt later asked if I had taken a picture. I said no. He said good. A picture is a souvenir. A souvenir is how a tour becomes a kit.

Loudoun, Which Is a County That Became a Climate

Northern Virginia is not a metaphor. Loudoun County is the densest cluster of data centers on Earth — on the order of three hundred halls, depending on who is counting and which warehouse still has a sign. People who like a sentence say a huge share of the world's internet traffic touches that county. I am not going to litigate the percentage. I am going to tell you what the county feels like from a car: warehouses that do not sell anything, substations that look like sculpture, a tax base that has made local government fluent in megawatts.

The land there is not Jakarta. The land is Loudoun. Jakarta is the comparison the UN needed so that a person in Ontario could see a scale. Loudoun is the comparison a person in Ashburn does not need, because the person can see the fence.

I had coffee with a planner who had stopped trying to make the word campus sound like a college. He paid. He said the remaining parcels were a fight about noise and water and a school that would have liked the land. He said the county had gotten very good at the math that makes a warehouse look like a hospital in the budget. I said a hospital has patients. He said a data center has a load factor. I paid for the refill because the sentence had already been a kindness.

Solar That Is Not a Virtue Until You Count the Acres

The sustainability slide loves a solar farm. I love a solar farm the way I love a dentist: I want it to exist and I do not want it to lie about what it replaced. A panel is a land use. A transmission corridor is a land use. A battery yard is a land use. If you cut carbon by moving electrons from a coal plant to a field of glass, you have done a thing. You have also drawn a new metro on a map that used to be a crop or a habitat or a nothing that was at least quiet.

Chapter 4 is the coal-to-bioenergy trap, where carbon falls and water and land stand up and bow. What belongs here is the simpler honesty: the 14,500 is not only roofs. It is the shadow of a watt. The watt has a body. The body has a fence.

Inez asked me, once, why the buildings needed so much grass. I said so you would not see the towers. She said the grass still needed water. I said that was the other book, and then I realized it was this one.

Amazon, Google, and the Check That Buys a County

Dominion, on an earnings call that reporters treated like a weather report, said data-center demand in its territory had more than doubled. The week around that weather, Google announced on the order of a billion dollars more for Virginia halls it already had. Amazon Web Services had already talked 35 billion in the same climate. I am not going to pretend I sat in those boardrooms. I am going to tell you what a billion does to a planning department. It makes the remaining parcels look like ingratitude.

A supervisor I will not name told me, off a record I did not have, that the opposition was "people who already have their house." I said the people who already have their house also have a tap. He said the tap was a regional problem. Regional is a word that means someone else. I bought him nothing. I left.

E-Waste, the Footnote the UN Would Not Let Die

The Richmond Hill authors also wanted e-waste in the conversation: the boards, the GPUs that become last year's brick, the cooling units that die when a generation dies. I am not going to write the toxicology. I am going to write the land. A brick has to sit somewhere. Somewhere is often a country that did not get the campus and did get the shred. The 14,500 does not even count that sitting. The 14,500 is the living watt. The dead watt is a later room I am only pointing at.

Douglas County, a Photograph, and a Cover I Did Not Choose

The UN report's cover is a row of servers in a Google hall in Douglas County, Georgia. I laughed when I saw it. Not because it is funny. Because a UN lab used a company's own gallery to illustrate the company's climate. The gallery is public. The gallon is not always. That is the disclosure gap in a jpeg.

I have been to Georgia. I have not been inside that hall. I have been inside the feeling of a photograph that is allowed because it has no number on it.

What a Setback Is For

A setback is a distance a code requires so that a warehouse does not sit on a child's window. Campuses love a setback because a setback is a photograph of a forest that is actually a berm. I walked a setback. The berm had young trees in tubes. The tubes had a vendor's name. The name was not the county's. I thought about Jakarta. I thought about the UN needing a metro area so that a berm would have a scale. The berm did not care. The berm was doing its job: making a hall look like a park from the road that voters use.

A county supervisor's aide told me the setback was "how we sold it." I said sold was an honest verb. She looked at me as if I had been rude. I had been rude. Rude is a kind of measurement.

Case File: The Digital Gateway That Died of a Notice

Prince William County is the other Virginia. Not Loudoun's finished climate. A rural edge near Gainesville, next to Manassas National Battlefield, where QTS and Compass wanted a corridor measured in thousands of acres and gigawatts. The Board of Supervisors approved the rezonings in December 2023 after a hearing that ran through a night — twenty-seven hours, or twenty-nine, depending on who is still angry. The planning staff had said no. The Planning Commission had said no. The board said yes, 4–3.

Neighbors and the American Battlefield Trust sued. In August 2025 Judge Kimberly A. Irving voided the rezonings because the county had botched the newspaper notices — a rule about when you advertise a hearing that sounds like a technicality until you remember that a technicality is how a public gets a public. The Court of Appeals affirmed on March 31, 2026. The county spent on the order of 1.7 million dollars of taxpayer money on lawyers and then, in April, voted not to go to the Supreme Court. Compass left. QTS hung on, then on July 2, 2026, withdrew and killed the project.

I am putting this in the land chapter because a gigawatt campus that does not get built is still a land story. The land stayed a battlefield and a homeowners' association and a night that people sat through. The industry called it a technicality. A technicality is a door a county left unlocked. Sometimes the neighbor walks through.

I talked to a person who had sat the hearing. She said the yes votes had talked about tax revenue the way other people talk about a child. She said the no votes had talked about a view. I said a view is not nothing. She said a view is the only thing a battlefield has left. I did not argue. I am not a historian. I am a person who has seen a berm pretend to be a park.

What 1,790 Acres Looks Like From a Car

I drove the edge. I am allowed to drive a public road. The fields were still fields. A historical marker did the work markers do. I did not stop to make a scene. I stopped because a tire light came on, which is the only honest reason I have ever stopped in a county I was using as research. A man at a gas station asked if I was looking at property. I said I was looking at a ghost. He thought I meant the battlefield. I let him think it.

Staff Recommendation: Deny

I keep thinking about Prince William's staff. Professional planners, paid by the county, looked at 1,790 acres and a gigawatt story and said deny. A commission said deny. A board said yes anyway, after a night that treated sleep as optional. Then a judge said the yes was void because the notice was wrong. Then an appeals court said the judge was right. Then the county spent 1.7 million dollars learning the word notice.

I have been in rooms where staff recommendations are furniture. You walk around them. You put a drink on them. You do not read them. The Digital Gateway is what happens when the furniture files a brief. I am not going to pretend every staff no is wisdom. I am going to pretend a staff no is a document a board should have to answer in public, in the same font, before a night that long.

The American Battlefield Trust's David Duncan said, after, that if the county had just played by the rules they might not have been able to stop it. I like that sentence because it is not a hymn. It is a near miss. Near misses are how land stays land.

Loudoun Versus Prince William, a Sibling Fight

Loudoun already is the climate. Prince William was asked to become one overnight. The difference is time. Time is how a tax base becomes a personality. Time is also how a neighbor learns the word setback too late. If you are a county that is not yet Loudoun, the Gateway is your assigned reading. The assigned reading ends with a withdrawn appeal and a field. I like the field. I do not like the 1.7 million. Both can sit in the same paragraph.

E-Waste, at a Length That Is Still Not Enough

A GPU has a birthday and a funeral. The funeral is often a container. The container is often a port. The port is often a country that got the shred and not the campus. I visited, once, a recycler who would talk on the record about "commodity recovery" and off the record about what they could not recover. He showed me a board that had been a brain. He said the gold was easy and the rest was a theology. I said the UN wanted this in the AI conversation. He said the AI conversation wanted a leaf. I bought him a coffee. He did not drink it. The board sat between us like a fish.

The 14,500 does not include that fish. I am saying so again because land is not only berms. Land is also a pile.

Douglas County, Georgia, the Cover I Keep Walking Back To

Google's Douglas County hall is on a UN cover because Google let a photographer in and the UN needed a picture that was not a cartoon. I respect a picture that is not a cartoon. I do not respect a picture that is allowed because it has no gallon. I have now written that sentence twice. It is worth twice. A cover is a disclosure choice. The choice was servers, not a tower, not a bill, not a creek. Servers look like the future. Towers look like a factory. The book you are holding is a tower book.

Singapore, a Moratorium That Was a Sentence

Singapore did a thing American counties keep promising to do and then forget. It paused. For a few years new data-center capacity was not a ribbon, it was a no. Then the no became a standard: prove the efficiency, prove the land is not a cartoon, do not assume an island owes you a winter. I have not sat the Singapore hearings. I have sat the American meetings that used Singapore as a slide titled we will not be Singapore, the way other meetings used Ireland. A rich city-state flinching is evidence. Treating the flinch as a foreign eccentricity is how you keep building in Loudoun.

A siting person told me Singapore was "a special case because land." I said Loudoun was a special case because water. He said Loudoun had a tax base. I said Singapore had a tax base. He said I was being difficult. I was being a map.

FLAP-D, Which Is a Nickname for a Full Plate

Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin — the old European nickname for a full plate — became a story about constraint before American counties admitted they had one. I am not going to tour five cities. I am going to say that a nickname is how an industry admits a commons filled up and still sounds like a club. Northern Virginia is a nickname now too. Data Center Alley. Alley is a cute word for a transmission problem.

I flew through Frankfurt once on a layover that had no business being a research trip. From the highway you can see halls that look like halls. Europe is less ashamed of the factory face. I respected the honesty and then I bought a bad sandwich. The sandwich is not a finding. The finding is that a continent can say full and still add a building, because full is a feeling until a system operator writes a letter.

The Field That Became a Queue Position

A landman named Wynn — that is still a job — showed me a parcel on a tablet in a diner that served pie I did not want. The parcel was a field. The field was a queue position if the interconnect study landed. He said the study was "in process." In process is how a field becomes an option. He asked if I knew anyone who needed megawatts. I said I used to. He said used to was a shame. I paid for the pie I did not want. He left the tablet face-down, which is the only privacy I saw that week.

Jakarta, in the UN sentence, is 32 million people in a metro. The field was zero people and a lot of future. The 14,500 square kilometers is how you add enough fields to need a metro. I do not need you to feel sorry for the field. I need you to stop calling the fence a park.

Licking County, a Midwest Hall, a Personality That Arrived Early

I am putting Ohio here as a land climate, not as a gallon I will swear to. New Albany and the counties around Columbus collected campuses the way Northern Virginia collected them a decade earlier: cheapish land, a tax story, fiber, a governor who could say future. Meta's hall there became a local weather. I have not audited Licking County's pumpage. I have sat in meetings that used Ohio as proof that "the Midwest wants us." Want is a chamber-of-commerce verb. A field does not want. A board wants. A school board wants a PILOT. Keep them separate.

A person who grew up near a warehouse corridor told me the halls looked like the warehouses until you noticed there were no trucks at 3 p.m. Absence of trucks is a land tell. A fulfillment center is a traffic problem. A campus is a transmission problem that pretends to be quiet. Quiet is a berm's job. I said so. She said the quiet was the only thing her uncle liked. I said I understood. I did. Quiet is a real amenity. Quiet is also how a gigawatt hides.

Community Benefits, a Scholarship Named Later

I have written the phrase community benefits into decks. The phrase is a scholarship that will be named later, a STEM day, a donation to a fire company that will look good in a photograph, sometimes a road. Sometimes the road is real. Sometimes the scholarship is real. The later is the tell. Later is how you buy a yes with a future that does not have to survive a drought.

A county attorney asked me, once, whether a benefits agreement could include gallons. I said it could if anyone wanted it to. He said the other side would call it unprecedented. I said unprecedented is how GS-5 started. He said he did not sit on a commission. I said then he sat on a deal. He looked at the table. The table had a leaf in the letterhead. I did not take the leaf. Some leaves should stay with the people who printed them.

What 14,500 Is If You Stop Being Cute

Twice Jakarta metro is a scale a minister can feel. It is also a cheat, because the 14,500 is generation land and associated land, not a single fence you can drive. I have already said I have never been to Jakarta. I am saying again that I do not need Jakarta. I need a county that is about to rezone a field and thinks a berm is a park. The UN gave the county a metro so the county could refuse to be impressed. Most counties are impressed anyway. Impressive is a rendering.

I drove past a rendering on a billboard. The billboard had a glass box and a sunrise that the campus will not observe. I thought about Wynn and the pie. I did not call him. Some parcels should stay fields long enough for a staff to write deny.