A low hum emerges from within a vast, dimly lit tomb, whose occupant devours energy and water with a voracious, inhuman appetite. The beige, boxy data center is a vampire of sorts—pallid, immortal, thirsty. Sheltered from sunlight, active all night. And much like a vampire, at least according to folkloric tradition, it can only enter a place if it’s been invited inside.

In states and counties across the US, lawmakers aren’t just opening the door for these metaphorical, mechanical monsters. They’re actively luring them in, with tax breaks and other incentives, eager to lay claim to new municipal revenues and a piece of the explosive growth surrounding artificial intelligence.

That may sound hyperbolic, but data centers truly are resource-ravenous. Even a mid-sized data center consumes as much water as a small town, while larger ones require up to 5 million gallons of water every day—as much as a city of 50,000 people.

Powering and cooling their rows of server stacks also takes an astonishing amount of electricity. A conventional data center—think cloud storage for your work documents or streaming videos—draws as much electricity as 10,000 to 25,000 households, according to the International Energy Agency. But a newer, AI-focused “hyperscale” data center can use as much power as 100,000 homes or more. Meta’s Hyperion data center in Louisiana, for example, is expected to draw more than twice the power of the entire city of New Orleans once completed. Another Meta data center planned in Wyoming will use more electricity than every home in the state combined.

And of course, unlike actual clouds, data centers require land. Lots of it. Some of the largest data centers being built today will cover hundreds of acres with impermeable steel, concrete, and paved surfaces—land that will no longer be available for farmland, nature, or housing—and require new transmission line corridors and other associated infrastructure as well.

Data centers have been part of our built landscape for over a decade, however—many of them tucked into unassuming office parks, quietly processing our web searches and storing our cellphone photos. So why the sudden concern? Artificial intelligence tools trained with large language models, such as Open AI’s ChatGPT, among others, use exponentially more computing power than traditional cloud services. And the largest technology companies, including Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft, are investing quickly and heavily in AI.

The number of US data centers more than doubled between 2018 and 2021 and, fueled by investments in AI, that number has already doubled again. Early in the AI boom, in 2023, US data centers consumed 176 terawatt-hours of electricity, roughly as much as the entire nation of Ireland (whose electric grid is itself nearly maxed out, prompting data centers there to use polluting off-grid generators), and that’s expected to double or even triple as soon as 2028.

This rapid proliferation can put an enormous strain on local and regional resources—burdens that many host communities are not fully accounting for or prepared to meet.

“Demand for data centers and processing has just exploded exponentially because of AI,” says Kim Rueben, former senior fiscal systems advisor at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Virginia and Texas have long had tax incentives in place to attract new data centers, and “other states are jumping on the bandwagon,” she says, hoping to see economic growth and new tax revenues.

But at a Land Policy and Digitalization conference convened by the Lincoln Institute last spring, Rueben likened the extractive nature of data centers to coal mines. “I don’t think places are acknowledging all the costs,” she says.

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Data Clause

At that conference, Chris Miller, executive director of the Piedmont Environmental Council, explained how roughly two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic passes through Northern Virginia. The region already hosts the densest concentration of data centers anywhere in the world, with about 300 facilities in just a handful of counties. Dozens more are planned or in development, ready to consume the region’s available farmland, energy, and water, enticed by a statewide incentive that saves companies more than $130 million in sales and use taxes each year.

Despite the state-level tax break, the data centers make significant contributions to local coffers. In Loudon County, which has over 27 million square feet of existing data center space, officials expect the total real and property tax revenues collected from local data centers in fiscal year 2025 to approach $900 million, nearly as much as the county’s entire operating budget. The proportion of revenue derived from data centers has grown so lopsided that the county’s board of supervisors is considering adjusting the tax rate, so as not to be so reliant on a single source.

While many communities see data centers as an economic boon due to that tax revenue, the facilities themselves are not powerful long-term job engines. Most of the jobs they create are rooted in their construction, not their ongoing operation, and thus are largely temporary.

Decades ago, PEC supported some of the data center development in Northern Virginia, says Julie Bolthouse, PEC’s director of land policy. But the industry has changed dramatically since then. When AOL had its headquarters in what’s known as Data Center Alley, for example, the company’s data center was a small part of a larger campus, “which had pedestrian trails around it, tennis courts, basketball courts … at its peak, it had 5,300 employees on that site,” Bolthouse says. The campus has since been demolished, and three large data center facilities are being built on the site. “There’s a big fence around it for security purposes, so it’s totally isolated from the community now, and it is only going to employ about 100 to 150 people on the same piece of land. That’s the difference.”

The facilities have also gotten “massive,” Bolthouse adds. “Each one of those buildings is using as much as a city’s worth of power, so that power infrastructure is having a huge impact on our communities. All the transmission lines that have to be built, the eminent domain used to get the land for those transmission lines, all of the energy infrastructure, gas plants, pipelines that deliver the gas, the air pollution associated with that, the climate impacts of all of that.”

Across Northern Virginia, on-site diesel generators—thousands of them, each the size of a rail car—spew diesel fumes, creating air quality issues. “No other land use that I know of uses as many generators as a data center does,” Bolthouse says. And while such generators are officially classified as emergency backup power, data centers are permitted to run them for “demand response” for 50 hours at a time, she adds. “That’s a lot of air pollution locally. That’s particulate matter and NOx [nitrogen oxides], which impacts growing lungs of children, can add cases of asthma, and can exacerbate heart disease and other underlying diseases in the elderly.”

And then there’s the water issue.

‘Like a Giant Soda Straw’

A study by the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) and University of Houston found that data centers in Texas will use 49 billion gallons of water in 2025, and as much as 399 billion gallons in 2030. That would be equivalent to drawing down the largest reservoir in the US—157,000-acre Lake Mead—by more than 16 feet in a year.

Anyone who’s accidentally left their phone out in the rain or dropped it in a puddle might wonder what a building full of expensive, delicate electronics could want with millions of gallons of water. It’s largely for cooling purposes. Coursing with electrical current, server stacks can get very hot, and evaporative room cooling is among the simplest and cheapest ways to keep the chips from getting overheated and damaged.

What that means, however, is that the water isn’t just used for cooling and then discharged as treatable wastewater; much of it evaporates in the process—poof.

“Even if they’re using reclaimed or recycled water, that water is no longer going back into the base flow of the rivers and streams,” Bolthouse says. “That has ecological impacts as well as supply issues. Everybody is upstream from someone else.” Washington, DC, for example, will still lose water supply if Northern Virginia data centers use recycled or reclaimed water, because that water won’t make it back into the Potomac River. Evaporative cooling also leaves behind high concentrations of salts and other contaminants, she adds, creating water quality issues.

There are less water-intensive ways to cool data centers, including closed-loop water systems, which require more electricity, and immersion cooling, in which servers are submerged in a bath of liquid, such as a synthetic oil, that conducts heat but not electricity. Immersion cooling allows for a denser installation of servers as well, but is not yet widely used, largely due to cost.

Ironically, it can be hard to confirm specific data about data centers. Given the proprietary nature of AI technology and, perhaps, the potential for public backlash, many companies are less than forthcoming about how much water their data centers consume. Google, for its part, reported using more than 5 billion gallons of water across all its data centers in 2023, with 31 percent of its freshwater withdrawals coming from watersheds with medium or high water scarcity.

A 2023 study by the University of California Riverside estimated that an AI chat session of 20 or so queries uses up to a bottle of freshwater. That amount can vary depending on the platform, with more sophisticated models demanding larger volumes of water, while other estimates suggest it could be closer to a few spoonfuls per query.

“But what goes unacknowledged, from a natural systems perspective, is that all water is local,” says Peter Colohan, director of partnerships and program innovation at the Lincoln Institute, who helped create the Internet of Water. “It’s a small amount of water for a few queries, but it’s all being taken from one basin where that data center is located—that’s thousands and thousands of gallons of water being drawn from one place from people doing their AI queries from all over the world,” he says.

“Wherever they choose to put a data center, it is like a giant soda straw sucking water out of that basin,” Colohan continues. “And when you take water from a place, you have to reduce demand or put water back in that same place, there’s no other solution. In some cases, at least, major data center developers have begun to recognize this problem and are actively engaging in water replenishment where it counts.

Locating data centers in cooler, wetter regions can help reduce the amount of water they use and the impact of their freshwater withdrawals. And yet roughly two-thirds of the data centers built since 2022 have been located in water-stressed regions, according to a Bloomberg News analysis, including hot, dry climates like Arizona.

It’s not just cooling the server rooms and chips that consumes water. About half of the electricity currently used by US data centers comes from fossil fuel power plants, which themselves use a lot of water, as they heat up steam to turn their massive turbines.

And the millions of microchips processing all that information? By the time they reach a data center, each chip has already consumed thousands of gallons of water. Manufacturing these tiny, powerful computing components requires “ultrapure” treated water to rinse off silicon residue without damaging the chips. It takes about 1.5 gallons of tap water to produce a gallon of ultrapure water, and the typical chip factory uses about 10 million gallons of ultrapure water each day, according to the World Economic Forum—as much as 33,000 US households.

As communities consider the benefits and risks of data center development, consumers might consider our own role in the growth of data centers, and whether our use of AI is worth the price of the water, power, and land it devours.

There could be important uses for artificial intelligence—if it can be harnessed to solve complex problems, for instance, or to improve the efficiency of water systems and electric grids.

There are clearly superfluous uses, too. A YouTube channel with 35 million subscribers, for example, features AI-generated music videos … of AI-generated songs. The MIT Technology Review estimates that, unlike simple text queries, using AI to create video content is extremely resource-heavy: Making a five-second AI-generated video uses about as much electricity as running a microwave nonstop for over an hour.

Data center defenders tend to point to the fact that Americans use more water each year to irrigate golf courses (more than 500 billion gallons) and lawns (over 2 trillion gallons) than AI data centers use. However, that argument rings false: America has a well-documented addiction to green grass that is also not serving us well. The solution, water experts say, lies in water conservation and consumer education, not comparing one wasteful use to another.

Putting a Finite Resource First

Even a small data center can place an immense, concentrated burden on local infrastructure and natural resources. In Newton County, Georgia, a Meta data center that opened in 2018 uses 500,000 gallons of water per day—10 percent of the entire county’s water consumption. And given Georgia’s cheap power and generous state tax breaks, Newton County continues to field requests for new data center permits—some of which would use up to 6 million gallons of water per day, more than doubling what the entire county currently consumes.

The intense demands that data centers place on regional resources make for complicated decision-making at the local level. Communities and regional water officials must engage in discussions about data centers early on, and with a coordinated, holistic understanding of existing resources and potential impacts on the energy grid and the watershed, says Mary Ann Dickinson, policy director for land and water at the Lincoln Institute. “We would like to help communities make smarter decisions about data centers, helping them analyze and plan for the potential impacts to their community structures and systems.”

“Water is often one of the last things that gets thought about, so one of the things that were really promoting is early engagement,” says John Hernon, strategic development manager at Thames Water in the UK. “So when you’re thinking about data centers, it’s not just about the speed you’re going to get, it’s not just about making sure there’s a lot of power available—we need to make sure that water is factored in at the earliest possible thinking … at the forefront, rather than an afterthought.”

Despite its damp reputation, London doesn’t receive a whole lot of rainfall compared to the northern UK — less than 25 inches a year, on average, or roughly half of what falls in New York City. Yet because so much growth is centered on London, the Thames Water service area holds about 80 percent of the UK’s data centers, Hernon says, and another 100 or so are proposed.

What’s more, their water usage peaks during the hottest, driest times of the year, when the utility can least accommodate the extra demand. “That’s why we talk about restricting or reducing or objecting to [data centers],” Hernon says. “It’s not because we don’t like them. We absolutely get it, we need them ourselves. AI will massively help our call center … which means we can have more people out fixing leaks and proactively managing our networks.”

Keeping the Lights On

One way for data centers to use less water is to rely more heavily on air-cooling technology, but this requires more energy —which may in turn increase water use indirectly, depending on the power source. What’s more, regional grids are already struggling to meet the demand of these power-hungry facilities, and there are hundreds more in the works. “A lot of these projects have been announced, but it’s not clear what can come on fast enough to power them,” says Kelly T. Sanders, associate professor of engineering at University of Southern California.

The government wants US technology companies to build their AI data centers domestically—not just for economic reasons, but for national security purposes as well. But even as the Trump administration appears to understand the enormous energy demands data centers will place on the electric grid, it has actively squashed new wind power projects, such as Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island.

Other carbon-free alternatives like small modular reactors (SMRs) and geothermal energy have bipartisan support, Sanders says. “But the problem is, even if you put shovels in the ground for an SMR today, it’s going to take 10 years,” she says. “The things that we can do the fastest are wind, solar, and batteries. But in the last six months we’ve lost a lot of the incentives for clean energy, and there’s an all-out war on wind. Wind projects that are already built, already paid for, are being canceled. And to me, that’s peculiar, because that’s electricity that would be ready to go out on the grid soon, in some of these regions that are really congested.”

Data centers are among the reasons ratepayers nationwide have seen their electric bills increase at twice the rate of inflation in the past year. Part of that is the new infrastructure data centers will require, such as new power plants, transmission lines, or other investments. Those costs, as well as ongoing grid maintenance and upgrades, are typically shared by all electric customers in a service area, through charges added to utility bills.

This creates at least two issues: While the tax revenues of a new data center will benefit only the host community, the entire electric service area must pay for the associated infrastructure. Secondly, if a utility makes that huge investment, but the data center eventually closes or needs much less electricity than projected, it’s the ratepayers who will foot the bill, not the data center.

Some tech companies are securing their own clean power independent of the grid—Microsoft, for example, signed a 20-year agreement to purchase energy directly from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. But that approach isn’t ideal either, Sanders says. “These data centers are still going to use transmission lines and all those grid assets, but if they’re not buying the electricity from the utility, they’re not paying for all that infrastructure through their rate bills,” she says.

Aside from generating new power, Sanders says, there are strategies to squeeze more capacity from the existing grid. “One is good old energy efficiency, and the data centers themselves have all of the incentives aligned to try to make their processes more efficient,” she says. AI itself could potentially also help enhance grid performance. “We can use artificial intelligence to give us more information about how power is flowing through the grid, and so we can optimize that power flow, which can give us more capacity than we would have otherwise,” Sanders says.

Another strategy is to make the grid more flexible. Most of the time, and in most regions of the US, we only use about 40 percent of the grid’s total capacity, Sanders says, give or take. “We build the capacity of the grid to meet the hottest day … and that’s where we worry about these large data center loads,” she says. A coordinated network of batteries, however —including in people’s homes and EVs—can add flexibility and stabilize the grid during times of peak demand. In July, California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) conducted the largest-ever test of its statewide “virtual power plant,” using residential batteries to supply 535 megawatts of power to the grid for two full hours at sundown.

With some intentional, coordinated planning—”it’s not just going to happen naturally,” Sanders says—it may be possible to add more capacity without requiring a lot of new generation if data centers can reduce their workloads during peak times and invest in large-scale battery backups: “There is a world in which these data centers can actually be good grid actors, where they can add more flexibility to the grid.”

Confronting Trade-Offs With Land Policy

As the demand for data centers grows, finding suitable locations for these facilities will force communities to confront myriad and imperfect trade-offs between water, energy, land, money, health, and climate. “Integrated land use planning, with sustainable land, water, and energy practices, is the only way we can sustainably achieve the virtuous circle needed to reap the benefits of AI and the economic growth associated with it,” Colohan says.

For example, using natural gas to meet the anticipated electricity load of Texas data centers would require 50 times more water than using solar generation, according to the HARC study, and 1,000 times more water than wind. But while powering new data centers with wind farms would consume the least water, it would also require the most land—four times as much land as solar, and 42 times as much as natural gas.

Absent an avalanche of new, clean power, most data centers are adding copious amounts of greenhouse gases to our collective emissions, at a time when science demands we cut them sharply to limit the worst impacts of climate change. Louisiana regulators in August approved plans to build three new gas power plants to offset the expected electricity demand from Meta’s Hyperion AI data center.

While towns or counties compete with one another to attract data centers, the host communities will reap the tax benefits while the costs—the intense water demand, the higher electricity bills, the air pollution from backup generators—will be dispersed more regionally, including to areas that won’t see any new tax revenue.

That’s one reason data center permitting needs more state oversight, Bolthouse says. “The only approval that they really have to get is from the locality, and the locality is not looking at the regional impacts,” she says. PEC is also pushing for ratepayer protections and sustainability commitments. “We want to make sure we’re encouraging the most efficient and sustainable practices within the industry, and that we’re requiring mitigation when impacts can’t be avoided.”

PEC and others are also pressing for greater transparency from the industry. “Very often, data centers are coming in with non-disclosure agreements,” Bolthouse says. “They’re hiding a lot of information about water usage, energy usage, air quality impacts, emissions—none of that information is disclosed, and so communities don’t really know what they’re getting into.”

“We need communities to be educated about what they’re facing, and what their trade-offs are when they let in a data center,” Colohan says. “What is the cost—the true cost—of a data center? And then how do you turn that true cost into a benefit through integrated land policy?”

Rueben says she understands the desire, especially in communities experiencing population loss, to tap into a growing industry. But rather than competing with each other to attract data centers, she says, communities ought to be having broader conversations about job growth and economic development strategies, factoring in the true costs and trade-offs these facilities present, and asking the companies to provide more guarantees and detailed plans.

“Forcing data center operators to explain how they’re going to run the facility more efficiently, and where they’re going to get their water from—and not just assuming that they have first access to the water and energy systems,” she says, “is a shift in perspective that we kind of need government officials to make.”

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Data center facilities in Prince William County, Virginia. The county has 59 data centers in operation or under construction. Credit: Hugh Kenny via Piedmont Environmental Council.

Think of digital signage in an urban streetscape, and you probably picture something like Times Square or Las Vegas. The unique attractions of those places notwithstanding, few municipalities are looking to replicate that aesthetic. In most urban downtowns, big, bright signs with moving images have faced very tight restrictions, if not outright banishment.

But a different response has started to emerge over the years, and especially recently, in cities from Denver to Atlanta, San Antonio to San Jose. The evolution of digital signage technology, combined with some adventurous thinking and experimentation, has led to the development of “media districts” designed to breathe life into existing neighborhoods in urban downtowns and beyond.

Denver has been a notable pioneer. Two decades ago there was, by legislative design, no digital signage downtown. As an advertising medium, such signs were seen as little more than extra-garish billboards, benefitting only their outdoor-media company owners and private landlords. But at the same time, the city was trying to figure out how to bring more activity—and actual light—to downtown streets around its performing arts complex and convention center, an area that tended toward unwelcoming darkness after nightfall. It was tough for restaurants and other businesses to draw customers, and the area lacked “a sense of place,” says David Ehrlich, who is now the executive director of the Denver Theatre District, and back then was a consultant with sports and entertainment businesses on venue projects.

Asked to work with the city on ideas for enlivening the district, Ehrlich was inspired by an old photograph of the same area in the late 19^th century, lit up by then-newfangled light bulbs and dubbed “the brightest street in America” by Thomas Edison. “Literally in the picture you could see a bunch of people on the street,” Ehrlich says. “I thought, you know, let’s do a back-to-the-future thing. Let’s take modern media to serve that purpose of creating a sense of place, a sense of safety.”

Today there are 17 digital signs of varying size installed in a 16-square-block area (along with 29 static, non-digital billboard-style signs that have gone up since the city implemented new regulations). Participating media companies that own the signs distribute 15 percent of their revenue — which generally works out to more than $1 million a year — to the nonprofit, nongovernmental Denver Theatre District, which funds various events and arts projects in the area. Some of these projects take place on the signs themselves: the companies are also required to turn over 20 percent of the screens’ time to the DTD for arts and cultural organizations, which can either promote their events or present their own programming. DTD also produces events and attractions like Night Lights Denver,  an ongoing outdoor art installation involving light projection on certain buildings in the district; a “15-second video festival,” presenting short films made by artists on downtown LED screens; and other digital work by local, national, and international artists.

Officials in Denver created a DTD sign plan as a supplementary document to the city code, originally involving a potential for 10 signs that were strictly banned elsewhere downtown. The plan put in place some general design parameters, explains Matthew Bossler, a senior city planner for Denver. These include, for example, a limitation on the luminosity of 25 lumens, and a specification that signs be located above the ground floor]. “There’s a kind of flexibility granted in exchange for higher design standards,” Bossler adds. “It also describes where on each building facade different types of signs can occur and some additional requirements such as how to avoid residential impacts.”

Given the initial permit application process (and the aftermath of the financial crisis), the first few signs went up gradually, over a period of four or five years. The technology underpinning digital signage, which had already evolved toward LED lighting, continues to improve. “You’re looking at a technology that has changed substantially in the last 15 years,” says James Carpentier, director of state and local government affairs for the International Sign Association (ISA), a trade organization. In addition to allowing for adjustable brightness and automatic dimming, it’s now much easier to configure “hold time,” to address concerns about quickly rotating ad messages potentially distracting drivers. (A typical digital sign, or “electronic message center” in most cities is 100 square feet, compared to an average of 7,000 square feet in Las Vegas, according to the ISA.)

On a more aesthetic level, modern LED signs offer much higher resolution and better color, can automatically adjust to changing light conditions, and consume less power than earlier technologies. Modular LED panels allow for varied design options, including curved screens – like the 25-by-60-foot sign-and-screen cluster at the intersection of 14th and Champa streets on the parking garage of the Colorado Convention Center. And they’re easier to coordinate, so that programming can run in sync on multiple screens.

Ehrlich now works with other cities, including Atlanta and San Antonio, through the Urban Activation Institute. While specific implementations vary, the basic blueprint is similar: Media companies get leeway to deploy signs under certain conditions, providing a steady revenue stream for local arts or other initiatives. Previously undervalued areas get a boost, ideally helping restaurants and other businesses. Proponents also say the additional light can help promote public safety. And local government spends nothing.

Opponents counter that the signs are too bright, potentially unsafe, or compromise the authenticity and character of cityscapes. “Imagine a digital advertising dystopia,” wrote one electronic signage foe in response to San Jose’s consideration of trying its own version of Denver’s experiment. Others contend that the tie-in to arts funding is a slick trick by advertisers to gain the support of resource-strapped policy makers. Planners, meanwhile, have had to consider how to regulate the technology, developing guidelines based on size, location, and other factors.

Even in Denver, the district is a work in progress, but one that seems to have at least some fans.  Bossler, the planner, is currently managing two rezoning cases involving properties that are immediately adjacent to the DTD, whose owners are seeking to be rezoned in order to get into the district, specifically aiming for approval for large-format sign installations.

“The theater district is one that we can generally describe as being a unique sub area within downtown that draws many visitors,” Bossler says. “And the special allowances for signs can contribute to that. The electronic billboards that are allowed in the district bring light, color, and dynamism to some of the most frequented areas of downtown, particularly those that are connected to our major theaters. This creates kind of a special ambiance and liveliness in the streets and public places within the district.” It encourages walking and presents a vibrant image, he adds, drawing more people to the district’s businesses—and that kind of economic impact is a positive sign.

Rob Walker is the author of City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape and The Art of Noticing. More of his writing can be found at robwalker.substack.com.

Lead image: A moment from the Supernova digital animation festival organized by Denver Digerati, visible on a digital billboard at 14th and Champa streets in downtown Denver. Credit: Denver Digerati.

This article is reprinted with permission from Bloomberg CityLab, where it originally appeared.

At the American Institute of Architects conference this year in Boston, those dressed in black—long the unofficial uniform of uber-creative design professionals—seemed to be outnumbered. The architects prowling the convention center were more likely to be sporting button-down Oxfords or Patagonia, on their way to such sessions as “Next-Level Roofs: Energy Efficiency, Embodied Carbon, and Code Compliance.”

An architectural trend can’t be based on a wardrobe census, of course, but a shift toward more practical, sustainability-oriented work was palpable. And increasingly, that means working on retrofits, rather than creating snazzy new structures. AIA billings survey data in 2022 revealed that architects for the first time were earning more revenue for commissions on existing buildings than new construction. Recent Pritzker Prize wins by Lacaton & Vassal and David Chipperfield represent high-profile recognition of advances in restoration and renovation. Rules are being put in place to encourage adaptive reuse, as in Los Angeles, or to promote a circular economy and limit demolition, as in San Antonio. Those ordinances are alongside financial incentives offered by several local governments for converting office buildings to residential use.

So while some may still dream of becoming the next Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid, many design professionals these days seem to be singularly—almost soberly—occupied with reworking blueprints, as part of the quest to make the built environment as green and socially responsible as possible.

“The most urgent thing that’s on our plate right now is climate action, and that we have to decarbonize very rapidly,” said Carl Elefante, author of the recently published Going for Zero: Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future and the architect credited with coining the phrase that the greenest building is the one that is already built.

It might be called the Retrofit Revolution. Or, more dramatically: the End of Architecture. At least as we knew it.

“Architecture’s long capital-P Project of exploring ever-more-complicated forms has finally come to an end. The heroic pursuit of formal complexity for its own sake feels like a bygone thing,” writes editor Jack Murphy in the May issue of The Architect’s Newspaper. “Architects should still make things, but perhaps they should be making maintenance plans or organization charts or business plans or adaptive reuse scenarios or affordable housing. Making form is necessary but easy; it’s the rest of the stuff that is hard.”

Does this mean nobody can build anything new, much less have any fun anymore? Not necessarily. It’s a safe bet there will always be a place for contemporary design—just as long as it’s green.

“There is only one crucial divide in architecture: architecture that is dependent on heavy fossil fuel inputs, and architecture that isn’t,” writes Barnabas Calder, historian of architecture at the University of Liverpool. In this context, style is beside the point.

The more critical distinction with this baseline specification of sustainability is that existing buildings, and all their embodied carbon, generally have an edge over new construction. So not only architecture but related fields like urban design, landscape architecture, planning, engineering, and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work “are all duking it out, so to speak, to get a share of this emerging market sector,” said Lori Ferriss, executive director of the Built Buildings Lab.

Increasingly, advances in technology in the field are geared toward retrofits, including determining the all-important issue of cost (it can often be cheaper to renovate versus demolish and build anew, though that’s not always the case). The CARE Tool (Carbon Avoided: Retrofit Estimator) is used by builders to help measure the environmental benefits of renovations. The global design firm Gensler has developed software called Conversions+ that can help determine the viability of converting office buildings to residential use, through a cost-conscious algorithmic analysis of elements such as floor plates, window and elevator locations. A company called Existing Conditions, exhibiting at the AIA convention, offers laser scanning and radar sensors so renovators can know the location and condition of the guts of any building, from pipes to rebar.

And accordingly, much of the brain power in architecture is being devoted to things other than creating sculptural elements that are interesting to look at. The work is almost by definition not showy, in the sense that it’s more likely to be rethinking the arrangement and quality of spaces on the inside of existing buildings, rather than the appearance of facades and exteriors. Some of the best energy and innovation in the field is likely to be found not in starchitect-led firms but ones like Gensler, a roll-up-the-sleeves operation that just won the National Building Museum’s 2025 Honor Award. The company, spurred on by the need for reinvented workplace interiors post-pandemic, has excelled in what This Old House viewers might recognize as the gut rehab. Similarly, a rising star is Annabelle Selldorf, is best known for projects like her expansion of New York City’s Gilded Age Frick Collection.

“Architecture is becoming less about individual expression and more about collective responsibility,” said Harry Cliffe-Roberts, Gensler’s building transformation and adaptive reuse leader.

All kinds of design innovations, whether in new construction or retrofits, are being celebrated more for broader societal goals, like affordable housing. The winner of the Single-Stair Design Competition, for example, was recently honored at the Congress for the New Urbanism in Providence, Rhode Island. Outdated codes requiring multiple egress in multifamily projects four stories and higher have been identified as a major contributor to higher housing costs; the problematique is how to configure stairways to maintain access and safety.

A little bit nerdy, to be sure, but part and parcel of the new ethos.

As to the next logical question: Have US architecture schools kept up? A handful of institutions have prided themselves on weaving practical elements into the curriculum, from zoning to finance. It’s a bit of a subjective assessment, but those that worship a little bit less at the altar of form include Northeastern, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Miami.

At the Rhode Island School of Design, Liliane Wong, author of Adaptive Reuse in Architecture: A Typological Index, has catalogued 50 conversion and reuse projects worldwide, including buildings such as the TWA Hotel at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, the Caixa Forum in Madrid, and the New Museum in Berlin.

“Let’s say I’m a design professor at a top university—I’m so erudite, you can hardly understand a single word I say. Is there a pedagogy of building reuse that would interest that guy?” said Elefante. In creating that pedagogy, he said, retrofit-minded professors ask, “What are the different ways that you can intervene with an existing building? Wouldn’t this be a cool design? It’s sort of the fox guarding the henhouse on getting the designers who scorn existing buildings for their architectural character, to actually understand retrofit as something that could be an interesting design challenge.”

Those who emphasize reuse are up against a stubborn tradition, in both firm culture and design education. “There’s always been a professional bias toward building new,” said Hillary Brown, author of Revitalize | Resettle: How Main Street USA Can Provide New Beginnings for America’s Climate Displaced. “It starts in architecture school where the studios mostly emphasize new form making. The journals seem to prefer new construction … that needs to change.”

Altogether, the prospects don’t look good for architect as artist. It’s not just the technological advances of artificial intelligence, which is poised to do the work of humans just as in the fields of medicine, journalism, and law. Pattern language playbooks provide step-by-step instructions for traditional ways of building. At Northeastern, an initiative called Equitable Zoning by Design offers visualizations of residential buildouts in areas being considered for rezoning. The idea is to conjure an easily repeatable urban design that will make dense multifamily development more acceptable to wary neighbors.

All sensible, though it does raise an uncomfortable question. With all the new software and off-the-shelf guides, who needs creative types to make aesthetic judgements?

Shaking up established frameworks is never easy, as George Clooney, playing the journalist Edward R. Murrow, recognizes in the opening monologue of Good Night, and Good Luck: “This just might do nobody any good.”

What seems likely is that the top architecture schools may have students learn about Le Corbusier as historical artifact—but disabuse their graduates of any notion of operating like him. With an eye toward being that much more employable, the next generation of architects may well demand it.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor to Land Lines.

Lead image: In Boston, this former office building at 31 Milk Street is slated for conversion to 110 residential units. Credit: Jimmy Emerson via Flickr.

Public land use projects and digital gaming don’t seem to have much in common. But the next wave of innovation to shape cities may come from a technology that’s blurring those lines. Last year, for instance, the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) set out to win voter approval for a tax to fund a new transit plan in Columbus, called LinkUs, that included a new bus rapid transit corridor. To make its case, the agency needed to help officials, and ultimately the public, visualize the positive changes this could bring to the corridor, adjacent neighborhoods, and the commuting experience. That’s a familiar challenge, but COTA’s strategy included an unusual component: augmented reality (AR) technology.

Artists and game designers have made creative use of AR—which layers digital images on top of real-world views seen through phones, headsets, and other devices—for years. In popular games like Pokémon Go, you peer at the world through your device’s screen, and the physical environment is suddenly inhabited by animated creatures and other digital objects relevant to game play. But AR can also be used to layer visualizations of more civic-minded elements onto city spaces: public art, monuments, and even transportation infrastructure.

“A lot of presentations were being done in the community via PowerPoint or a pitch deck,” recalls Aslyne Rodriguez, COTA’s senior director of regional strategic partnerships. “However, there was this need for and want to have something that was a more tangible experience.” The planned corridor was simply a highway. How to engage citizens with what its future could be? “It was important for people to know what bus rapid transit looks like, but we also wanted to show them what happens when you bring bus rapid transit,” Rodriguez continues. “New development pops up, new business, new grocery stores. And [the project included] protected bike lanes and connections to trails. So it was a very big message.”

Learning about AR led them to inCitu, a technology firm based in New York that has produced a range of AR experiences, from walking tours to visualizations of municipal projects. With additional partners including the strategic engagement firm MurphyEpson, they identified key sites along the current, regular bus route and devised an immersive tour: Participants would use their phone to scan a QR code, activating AR-enhanced depictions of what was planned. Guided, immersive bus tours ran twice a week for six months, attended by hundreds of community stakeholders. In addition, the partners placed QR codes on existing bus shelters and other points along the route to make the AR pitch even more accessible for those unable to take the guided tour. Voters approved the plan’s funding.

Of course, COTA also used traditional outreach methods, including community meetings and presentations, and a social media push (the mayor even posted a selfie in the AR version of a new transit station). But this form of digital immersion offers a distinct engagement experience. “There is something magical about scanning a QR code, raising your phone, and seeing the future,” says inCitu founder and CEO Dana Chermesh-Reshef.

COTA’s successful experience was cited in a December 2024 report from Urban Tech Hub at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute that explored the possibilities of augmented reality for cities and municipalities. But those possibilities may also introduce challenges; consider, after all, the disruptions caused by the emergence of ride-sharing, short-term rentals, and smart-city technologies, says Greg Lindsay, the report’s author and a former urban tech fellow at the Urban Tech Hub. Lindsay wrote the afterword for the Lincoln Institute’s City Tech book and delivered remarks on cities and technology at a recent Lincoln Institute convening on land policy and digitalization.

AR, Lindsay argues, is at heart a new way of using public spaces by adding digital layers to them, potentially raising questions about how such content (commercial and otherwise) should be overseen or regulated, and who will end up setting those terms: tech platforms, cities, or some other entity. The challenge for cities, Lindsay says, is: “Can you get better at anticipating disruptors and heading them off at the pass?”

This is why one of the recommendations in Lindsay’s report is that cities should be open to experimenting with AR sooner rather than later, to develop a comfort level with the technology, even if potential use cases aren’t fully determined. While COTA provides a striking example of using AR in a way that directly impacted land use decisions, Lindsay points out that collaborations with artists, educators, and civic groups can also play a role. This year, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the New York Parks Department, and the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation presented an AR restaging of the artists’ famous 2005 installation, The Gates, creating a digital version of the piece’s 7,500 saffron-colored panels, visible through a smartphone. And artist Marcus Brown used AR to create what amounted to a digital installation around New Orleans, mapping and illustrating the history of the slave trade in that city. The possibilities, say AR proponents, are nearly endless.

These nascent technologies have considerable potential to improve cities, argues Chip Giller, cofounder and executive director of Agog: The Immersive Media Institute. “Storytelling can become three-dimensional, and planning tools can become three-dimensional,” he says. “So rather than just having a charette or having a computer model, you’ll be able to actually step into what the future could be.” Agog works with creators and nonprofit leaders to “harness the power of extended reality,” or XR, a term that encompasses augmented reality, virtual reality, and adjacent technologies.

One of Agog’s partners, Arizona State University, is in the third year of an ambitious project to reimagine and redevelop 14 vacant parcels in Los Angeles owned by Caltrans, the California transit agency. ASU is adopting the parcels, which Caltrans owns but had no plans for, under the agency’s Adopt-A-Highway program. With the help of other partners including Los Angeles Trade Tech Professor Marcela Oliva and the Collaboratorium, ASU’s Narrative and Emerging Media program is using technology to help engage community members in plans to develop the sites, says Nonny de la Peña, director of the ASU program and a pioneer in immersive digital storytelling.

Many of the lots are highway adjacent and awkwardly sized and located, and some have become targets for dumping and graffiti. The goal is not only to use AR and other immersive tech to plan new uses, but to help bring community members into the process, says de la Peña, “to regreen [the spaces], turn them into parks.” One space along the 110 freeway through downtown, not far from ASU’s satellite campus, has been turned into a community garden and park, and the partnership has broken ground on a second space and was choosing a third this spring.

As de la Peña explains, the project involves creating a three-dimensional digital twin of each site that students, residents, and stakeholders can experiment with, shaping what the space might become. “Before we even update the physical side of the site, we’re working with the community by teaching them some basic skills of creating 3D models,” says Sultan Sharrief, an ASU researcher and self-described “media scientist” in de la Peña’s program. “We’re providing the tools and the kind of structure—for example, how do we create the digital library of plants that will succeed in these spaces so they can then design with those in mind?” They’re now equipping the first site with sensors to keep its digital twin updated, so community members can keep tweaking the space. “We’re just getting started,” de la Peña says.

InCitu, the firm that helped bring AR into the Columbus transportation effort, is now involved in projects in Phoenix, New York, and other cities. In Washington, DC, the company is working with both the planning office and the office of technology, and it’s starting work with a downtown revitalization effort in Myrtle Beach, SC. It also now provides a web-based AR platform called inCituAR, designed to let planners and architects share their ideas and proposals, to experiment directly with the technology and its capabilities. In other words, plenty of municipal entities seem to be taking Lindsay’s advice to get familiar with AR and other immersive tools while they are still in relatively early stages.

“It’s not about the cool technology,” says inCitu’s Chermesh-Reshef, “it’s about the fact that this technology actually enables easy engagement and effective engagement.” The most promising projects, she says, are attempting to address one of the most familiar and longstanding challenges, and aspirations, of planning: “Our goal is to foster better conversations.”

Rob Walker is the author of City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape and The Art of Noticing. More of his writing can be found at robwalker.substack.com.

Lead image: Augmented reality allows this tablet owner to visualize a proposed affordable housing development in the Bronx, New York. The building visible behind the people on the screen replaces the parked cars in the actual background. Credit: inCitu.

Durante años, cierto residente de Nueva Orleans, alguien que conduce mucho por trabajo, se encontraba con algo demasiado conocido cada vez que doblaba en una esquina: calles llenas de baches y pavimentos rotos. “Mira esta maldita calle”, se decía a sí mismo. En realidad, usaba palabras más fuertes que “maldita”. Y un tiempo después, convirtió esta frase en el nombre de usuario de una cuenta de Instagram dedicada a documentar y hablar de los muchos defectos de la infraestructura de Crescent City.

Hoy en día, la cuenta, a la que llamaremos LATFS (lookatthisfuckinstreet) por su sigla en inglés, tiene más de 125.000 seguidores, incluidos empleados de agencias de la ciudad y empresas de agua cuyas cuentas etiquetó en algunas publicaciones sarcásticas. “Pensé que me bloquearían”, dijo el creador de la cuenta, que ha optado por permanecer en el anonimato. En cambio, esas agencias comenzaron a prestar atención a la cuenta y, en algunos casos, los problemas señalados (y ridiculizados) en LATFS se solucionaron con rapidez. Hoy en día, el creador de la cuenta selecciona el contenido que le envían y, si bien la cuenta no forma parte del sistema de mantenimiento de infraestructura de Nueva Orleans de manera oficial, no se puede negar que está presente. Y puede servir como ejemplo para las ciudades que quieren aprovechar los aportes de los ciudadanos para administrar el mantenimiento de la infraestructura.

El uso de la tecnología para fortalecer la comunicación entre el gobierno y los ciudadanos es, por supuesto, una práctica establecida desde hace mucho tiempo. En 1996, la Comisión Federal de Comunicaciones designó el número 311 para llamadas sobre servicios gubernamentales que no sean de emergencia. Baltimore fue la primera ciudad en implementar el sistema 311 ese año y, luego, otras ciudades hicieron lo mismo, de modo que comenzaron a ofrecer una manera fácil de informar sobre baches, grafitis, semáforos que funcionan mal y otras cuestiones. Esta primera versión de colaboración abierta pronto se trasladó a la virtualidad y evolucionó hasta convertirse en sistemas basados en la web o apps que pueden (según el municipio) responder a textos, aceptar fotos o videos e incorporar software de back-end que recopilan y consolidan datos de servicio.

Además, surgieron servicios del sector privado para proporcionar a las ciudades plataformas de conexión ciudadana más fáciles de usar y eficientes. SeeClickFix, pionera en esa categoría, se creó en 2007 y fue adquirida en 2019 por CivicPlus, una firma tecnológica del sector público con más de 10.000 clientes municipales. CivicPlus ofrece varios servicios, desde software y sitios web para gobiernos locales hasta un sistema de alerta de emergencia. Una de las principales prioridades de sus clientes es hacer que estos sistemas funcionen juntos de la mejor manera posible, dice Cari Tate, directora de soluciones de CivicPlus.

Para los productos relacionados con el sistema 311, eso significa hacer que las inquietudes de los usuarios lleguen a la parte correcta del gobierno municipal sin problemas y asegurarse de que las personas se sientan escuchadas. “En el fondo, los residentes quieren que sus comunidades mejoren”, dice Tate, una veterana de SeeClickFix que se unió a CivicPlus luego de la adquisición, “y quieren asociarse con el gobierno local para que eso suceda. Pero, a menudo, no saben cómo hacerlo o sienten que sus comentarios no llegan a buen puerto”.

En parte, se trata de mejorar la funcionalidad. La revista Government Technology publicó un artículo en el que se analizaron los comentarios en la tienda de apps de 75 apps del sistema 311 de distintas ciudades y condados, y se identificó a Improve Detroit como una de las más elogiadas. La app, que utiliza el software SeeClickFix, se actualiza con regularidad para añadir nuevas funciones útiles. Por ejemplo, después de las inundaciones de 2021, el gobierno añadió una herramienta para presentar reclamos por daños causados por el agua.

Pero para que la tecnología conecte de manera efectiva a la ciudadanía con el gobierno, también es clave estar donde están las personas, y eso hoy en día es, cada vez más, en las redes sociales. Durante años, algunos municipios han publicado hashtags, como “#502pothole” (#502baches) en Louisville, que los ciudadanos podían usar para informar problemas.

Pero los usuarios de las redes sociales no necesitan una invitación para hablar sobre las fallas o imperfecciones de la infraestructura local. Y hablar sobre fallas en espacios digitales públicos a menudo se siente más satisfactorio que hacerlo en los canales oficiales. Nueva Orleans, por ejemplo, tiene una línea 311, pero a veces pareciera como una “caja negra” en comparación con la animada camaradería de Instagram, señala el creador de LATFS. Y cuando se obtienen resultados reales a través de Instagram, la atención aumenta. Un ejemplo de esto podría ser la serie de imágenes de una señal de alto caída y su reemplazo pintado a mano por los ciudadanos, que llamó la atención de un concejal de la ciudad que usó los servicios municipales para hacer una verdadera reparación y le dio crédito a LATFS en los medios locales. (Un vocero de la empresa de servicios públicos de alcantarillado y agua de la ciudad dijo que la empresa no “sigue de forma activa” a LATFS, pero conoce la cuenta y que, a menudo, la empresa de servicios públicos se entera de los problemas antes de que aparezcan en las redes sociales, haciendo referencia al número telefónico de contacto oficial que funciona en forma eficaz como la mejor vía para informar sobre los problemas).

Un desafío que enfrenta el uso práctico de las redes sociales es que las reacciones a los problemas transitorios pueden carecer de contexto. Para la planificación de la infraestructura, los datos de las redes sociales son, “en realidad, muy turbios y nada específicos”, dice Julia Kumari Drapkin, directora ejecutiva y fundadora de ISeeChange, una plataforma de datos sobre riesgos climáticos y participación comunitaria que trabaja con Nueva Orleans, Miami y otros municipios y empresas de servicios públicos. Su enfoque toma datos de las redes sociales y utiliza la IA para ayudar a crear soluciones más amplias. Da la casualidad de que ha trabajado con LATFS, ya que le solicitó que dirija a sus seguidores a la app ISeeChange durante la inundación, para que los residentes puedan cargar informes y fotos en tiempo real.

El software de ISeeChange puede combinar esa información con los datos de los clientes y “brindar información a las ciudades, las empresas de servicios públicos y de ingeniería de forma directa”, dice Drapkin. En un proyecto reciente con la firma de ingeniería y diseño Stantec, ISeeChange recopiló datos de inundaciones que ayudaron a mejorar un proyecto de infraestructura de inundaciones en Nueva Orleans, mediante la reasignación de USD 4,8 millones en fondos federales y la ampliación de más del doble de la capacidad de aguas pluviales en un vecindario de bajos ingresos. Además, sostiene que son los residentes del lugar quienes pueden proporcionar los mejores datos. (Este año, ISeeChange comenzó a recolectar informes de inundaciones y desagües pluviales para la empresa de servicios públicos de alcantarillado y agua de Nueva Orleans).

El papel de las redes sociales en la notificación de problemas de infraestructura puede ser algo desordenado, pero su gran popularidad hace que sea difícil de ignorar. El año pasado, el candidato a doctorado en sociología de la Universidad de Tulane, Alex Turvy, publicó un artículo en la revista Social Media + Society en el que analizaba las publicaciones de LATFS y los comentarios que le proporcionó el creador de la cuenta. Dividió las estrategias de los usuarios en categorías (vergüenza, burla y exposición) y argumentó que la cuenta permite a los residentes “recuperar la narrativa de los desafíos de infraestructura de su ciudad” a través del humor, la conexión y el “conocimiento grupal”. Y aunque hay mucho enojo y sarcasmo, los usuarios también intercambian explicaciones e información práctica.

Turvy reconoce tanto la utilidad de los sistemas del estilo 311 como el desafío que enfrentaría un gobierno municipal si tratara de encajonar el discurso descontento y profano de algo como LATFS. Y aunque en otros lugares han aparecido cuentas similares impulsadas por los ciudadanos (por ejemplo, PWSA Sinkholes de Pittsburgh en Instagram), muchas se esfuman si no logran atraer seguidores. Pero las ciudades aún podrían aprender de LATFS, aunque sea un caso atípico, argumenta Turvy.

“La lección principal es que las ciudades deben dejar de tratar los informes de los ciudadanos como solicitudes de servicio individuales y, en cambio, verlos como parte de una narrativa colectiva sobre cuestiones de infraestructura”, dice. Mientras que los sistemas tradicionales se sienten como una transacción, LATFS se siente como una historia compartida por la comunidad. Su éxito, señala, “destaca el poder de la narración sobre el procesamiento de servicios”. Para fomentar ese enfoque “orgánico e impulsado por los ciudadanos”, las ciudades podrían trabajar con grupos comunitarios, comunicarse de manera más proactiva y demostrar cómo se están llevando a cabo acciones basadas en los comentarios que se reciben.

Tal vez esto pueda parecer un poco utópico, pero también se superpone con las tendencias y aspiraciones de los sistemas de estilo 311. Las ciudades quieren “proporcionar un medio para que los residentes reciban respuestas y vean todo lo que se está haciendo”, dice Tate de CivicPlus. Lo que suele ocurrir es que “se ven todos los problemas, pero no se ve lo que realmente está haciendo el municipio”. Cada vez más, las ciudades buscan sistemas con análisis de datos confiables que también “brinden visibilidad y ayuden a cambiar la mentalidad y generar confianza”.

Si bien LATFS sigue siendo un foro muy irreverente centrado más que nada en las quejas y bromas y no tanto en el municipio o en las complejidades de la planificación de la infraestructura, es probable que el compromiso de la ciudad con la cuenta haya suavizado su estado de oposición original. “Tratamos de no publicar quejas sobre cuestiones que se están reparando, de las que recibo muchas”, dice su fundador. “No podemos burlarnos de la ciudad por hacer reparaciones”. Dicho esto, también se apresura a señalar que es un ciudadano, no un urbanista o un activista de la ciudad. Como él mismo dijo: “Solo soy un tipo que publica en Instagram”. Pero, a veces, esa es justamente la opinión que los municipios deben escuchar, y las personas con las que desean interactuar.

Rob Walker es periodista; escribe sobre diseño, tecnología y otros temas. Es el autor de City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape. Publica un boletín en robwalker.substack.com.

Imagen principal: Esta señal de alto pintada a mano ganó notoriedad (e inspiró al municipio a dar una solución) después de que se subiera la foto a Instagram. Crédito: LATFS.