Why Here? Dr. Gionni Carr on Where Data Centers Land and Who Carries the Cost
Oct 28, 2026
Data centers are popping up across the country faster than most communities can ask questions. On October 27, 2026, Young, Gifted & Green asked one of the most important questions
: why here? The answer came from Dr. Gionni Carr, whose study appears in the first issue of the Journal of Spatial Equity and Education (JSEE).
Latrice Adams, founder, CEO, and president of Young, Gifted & Green and a Memphis native, moderated the one-hour evening briefing, Why Here: The Truth About Where Data Centers Land. Her city has become a national flashpoint in the data center debate. Young, Gifted & Green commissioned the research, with support from Sustaining Our Future Foundation. Dr. Rajah E. Smart, founder and Editor-in-Chief of JSEE, opened the evening and supported Dr. Carr in developing the research.
Where you live is not a neutral fact
Dr. Smart framed the evening with a question from his childhood in Flint, Michigan. Why did some neighborhoods have so many liquor stores and churches, and why was the land shaped the way it was? That question became the Spatial Echo, a framework built on three lenses: critical policy analysis, critical race theory, and critical geography. The Tennessee Educational Funding and Policy (TNEFP) Center developed the Spatial Echo.
The framework begins in 1937, when federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) surveyors graded city neighborhoods A through D. In Flint, General Motors helped shape the lines that the government then adopted. They wrote those grades onto the ground itself. As Dr. Smart put it, inscription requires a surface. The built environment is that surface, and it is why the geometry outlives the policy that wrote it.
His central point for the audience was simple. Policy is written in general terms, but it lands in specific places. When policy ignores how history has marked the ground, it clears the way for gentrification, displacement, and now data centers. Spatial research gives communities hard evidence about where they already live. It also gives decision makers a way to direct resources to the places that need them and measure results where people actually live.
Dr. Smart closed with three requests for everyone listening:
1. Ask where an outcome happens, not only what happens.
2. Bring both: pair local knowledge with spatial evidence.
3. Join the work.
The question: what makes a place attractive?
Dr. Carr was clear from the start. His study does not ask whether data centers are good or bad. It asks what spatial characteristics make a host site attractive to developers, and it treats that as the first step before anyone can responsibly ask what data centers do to the people around them.
He organized the question into two dimensions:
Proximity: the land, power, fiber connections, and how close a site is to the people who use the data.
Policy: the tax incentives, utility rules, zoning, and approval processes that shape what gets built and how fast.
The study compared five markets: California, Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, and Virginia. Each was chosen because it hosts many data centers or is growing quickly. Dr. Carr used a document-based comparative design, drawing on peer-reviewed research, government and national laboratory reports, industry market analyses, and reputable journalism. Opinion pieces were left out. A characteristic counted as common only if it appeared in at least three of the five markets.
He explained why the source list went beyond peer review. The data center sector is moving faster than journal publishing can keep up with, so a study limited to peer-reviewed work would already be behind.
What he found: power decides, policy sweetens
Proximity decides where data centers go. Policy helps, but it doesn't bring them.
Factor | Role in siting | What the five markets showed |
Reliable, inexpensive power | Decisive | Every market needed it. |
Transmission-ready land | Decisive | Developers want large parcels they can build on right away. |
Network connectivity and clustering | Decisive | Data centers follow existing fiber and substations. |
Water | Conditional | Binding only in Arizona and in drought-prone parts of California. |
Tax incentives and utility rates | Common, not essential | California draws data centers without a dedicated incentive. |
Clustering, which researchers call agglomeration, explains a puzzle. Large, open land in the Midwest has attracted few data centers. Dr. Carr explained that the first developer in a new area must pay to build substations and high-voltage lines, which can run into millions of dollars per mile. Once someone breaks ground, others follow.
California was the telling case on policy. It offered no special tax break and still ranks among the leading markets. Incentives make a deal sweeter, but infrastructure closes it.
The echo: what attracts a data center is how the cost comes back
Dr. Carr read his findings through the Spatial Echo (Smart, 2026), and this is where the study turns from siting to people. The same features that draw a data center to a place become the channels through which costs reach the community that hosts it.
Power: a site is chosen for its grid, and grid upgrades can show up on every household's utility bill.
Water: a site is chosen for its water supply, and in dry regions the strain falls on the local watershed.
Tax incentives: a site is chosen partly for its tax breaks, and the community gives up revenue that would have funded schools and local services.
Land: a site is chosen for large open parcels, and clearing them for substations and towers changes what was there before.
The sender-receiver idea from the Spatial Echo fits here. A host community sends out its electricity, water, and tax base. In return, it often receives noise, emissions, and higher bills, while revenue flows to operators and shareholders elsewhere.
Dr. Carr also pointed to what siting decisions most often leave out: the community's voice. He played public testimony from residents calling for moratoriums, including speakers in Memphis. He noted Tennessee's own data center debates in Memphis and Nashville, and what he described as new state legislation aimed at keeping data center electricity costs off ordinary ratepayers. His study asks a fair question: if a community hosts a data center, should it not share in the benefit?
What comes next
Dr. Carr was open about the study's limits. It relied on documents, not interviews or surveys. The public record is uneven, with far more available on Virginia, the world's largest data center hub, than on Arizona. And the sector is changing faster than research can be published.
He described this study as the foundation for a longer line of work. The next steps are to test the findings across more markets, then examine who lives in the communities where data centers land, and finally measure what happens to those communities once the facilities are built. That sequence reflects the standard Dr. Smart set for JSEE: describe carefully first, and make causal claims only when the design can carry them.
He closed with the line that ends his article: proximity determines where the burden is created, and policy determines who is left to carry it.
Read and watch
Read the article: Carr, J. G. (2026). Proximity and policy: The spatial attractiveness of data centers across five U.S. markets. Journal of Spatial Equity and Education, 1(1), 18–41. https://doi.org/10.66981/001c.167460
Read the editorial: Smart, R. E. (2026). An agenda for spatial equity. Journal of Spatial Equity and Education, 1(1), 8–10. https://doi.org/10.66981/001c.167464
Watch the webinar: Why Here: The Truth About Where Data Centers Land, Young, Gifted & Green, recorded October 27, 2026.
Explore the full first issue: JSEE Volume 1, Issue 1
The Journal of Spatial Equity and Education is published by the Tennessee Educational Funding and Policy Center (TNEFP). It welcomes scholarship from every discipline that treats place as something to study, not just a backdrop. Submissions: submissions@tnefp.org.
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