Architecture, Planning, and International Law: On Data Centers

Architecture, Planning, and International Law is an open-ended series bringing legal and built environment experts together to discuss urgent topics at the intersection of their jurisdictions.

Current tech industry speculation relies on a vision of our future completely transformed by the broad implementation of generative artificial intelligence, the consequences of which have already begun to reconfigure our contemporary built and natural environment. As one manifestation of this, data centers—buildings which store the servers and networking equipment that host the internet—are becoming increasingly influential infrastructures, key material pieces of today’s digital world. Combining unprecedented material extraction with an unclear regulatory framework, the data center landscape is evolving across borders, both rapidly and largely without guidelines. As the use of AI expands exponentially, so does the impact of these structures, introducing urgent questions at the intersection of architecture, planning, and law: Where should data centers be built, if at all? What should their design prioritize? How will they impact the surrounding communities and environments? And perhaps most importantly: who decides?

A continuation of the League’s “Architecture Planning and International Law” series and hosted in partnership with the independent research and policy institute Data & Society, this program convenes experts in design and policy from the local to the supranational scales to better understand what informs data centers’ siting and design, encourage engaged participation in these decisions, and help steer us toward more humane infrastructure for a hybrid world.

Learn more here.

Banner image credit: Livia Garofalo

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New York State and AIA CEUs are available to League members who attended the live event in its entirety.

This event will not be livestreamed.

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