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The era of supersized data centers is upon us. As artificial intelligence dominates the agendas of the tech giants, the need for bigger and more powerful data centers is accelerating, and it’s leading to a building boom that could reshape the American landscape. “We aren’t seeing gigawatt buildings yet, but it’s really only a matter of time,” says Dan Drennan, data centers sector leader at Corgan, the top-ranking architecture firm on Building Design + Constructions annual list of revenue for data center design. These rising demands are creating new challenges for the design of data centers, from the power generation needed to the infrastructure to the buildings that contain the servers that make AI work. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, everything is getting bigger. Meta recently announced plans to build data centers that use up to 5 gigawatts of power. OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank announced plans earlier this year to invest up to $500 billion in a vast data center building spree. These and other so-called hyperscale data users like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are expected to drive most of the growth in data centers in the U.S. and globally, according to an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group. While the average data center building uses 40 megawatts of power today, it’s not uncommon for the biggest companies to be relying on data centers that suck up 300 to 400 megawatts of power per building. And that number is only going up. More power, bigger buildings Vantage Data Center, Goodyear, Arizona [Photo: Courtesy Corgan] “We’re actually building several multi-GW clusters.” Mark Zuckerberg’s July 14 data center building announcement on Facebook put these plans into somewhat menacing perspective. He paired his post with a visualization of a massive rectilinear block smothering a large portion of New York City. “Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan,” he wrote. Meta’s largest announced projectthe Louisiana-based Hyperion data centeris expected to use 2 gigawatts of power by 2030, with the potential to grow to 5 gigawatts of capacity. Now in its very early stages of construction, it sits on 2,250 acres of a former agricultural site. Manhattans total land area is more than 14,000 acres. “From a logistical standpoint, it just makes sense to build these things under one roof,” says Gordon Dolven, director of CBRE Americas data center research. The dominant paradigm of AI today is the large language model, which pulls its intelligence out of deep pools of data and information stored in numerous servers stacked in long rows of 8-foot-tall cabinets, like the aisles of a grocery store filled with nothing but black boxes and blinking blue lights. These servers connect and communicate with each other almost synaptically, so the closer they are to one another, the faster they can make those connections. The farther away they are, the slower the connections, and the more networking infrastructure and fiber optic cables required to keep them in communication. That’s why the building size of data centers is increasing, and also why the companies pushing the development of AI are trying to have more of these large buildings constructed near each other. For example, Meta’s Hyperion data center will be made up of 11 buildings covering more than 4 million square feet, according to a company spokesperson. Its Prometheus data center in Ohio is a vast campus that’s scaling up to run on 1 gigawatt of power by 2026, partly by gearing up servers in quickly built mega-tents. Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the Acquired Live event in San Francisco in September 2024. Listeners heard how Meta is playing a big role in defining the next decade of computing with AI. [Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images] A bigger load More servers means more equipment to help them run efficiently, and that results in data center buildings surrounded by lots of large mechanical, cooling, and electrical equipment. “The big thing for data centers is they always have to have backup power. Then you usually need an extra, so there’s a backup to the backup. And those take up a lot of space,” says Rob LoBuono, a critical facilities leader at Gensler, another of the top architecture firms designing data centers. Backups are also being used for the data itself. “We’re seeing more of a trend toward multiple buildings, multiple points of redundancy, separated across the campus.” And because the server equipment is getting heavier, the buildings need more robust structures at the foundation, with more material-intensive construction. “Where we were planning for 200 or 250 pounds per square foot previously, we’re now talkig about 400, 500 pounds per square foot of loading on these floor plates,” Drennan says. “The loading that you’re planning for on the building goes up.” All these factors are combining to make the buildings enormous. It’s not uncommon for construction on the larger AI-focused campuses to cover 500,000 square feet or more, usually across a single story. And technically they can keep growing. “If you’re talking about a new building, assuming the land is such that we’re able to shape the building in a way that we can get all the gear around the building that’s needed to serve that compute in an efficient way, then there’s really no limit to how big these can go,” Drennan says. More efficient infrastructure Data center campuses don’t necessarily need to grow to Manhattan size, though, and almost certainly won’t. Experts say the equipment and infrastructure behind data centers, and AI data centers in particular, are getting denser, more efficient, and smaller. As a result, data center operators are packing more servers into these spaces, boosting their computing capacity as well as their electricity demands. Just a few years ago, data centers could expect servers to use about 200 watts per square foot of space, Drennan says. A 10,000-square-foot building would pull about 2 megawatts of power in total. But server sizes have gone down and data centers can pack more of them into the same amount of space. “Now you’ve got three, four, five times that density. So that same 10,000 square feet that used to be 2 megs is now 8 megs or 10 megs of power, Drennan says. Scale the building to 100,000 square feet or 500,000 square feet, or even build multiple buildings at that size, and the capacity of the data center goes up significantly. The cooling question A lot of that efficiency is driven by the support systems that keep data centers running, especially the all-important cooling equipment that allows servers to run 24 hours a day without overheating. Dolven says data centers used to rely solely on air cooling (think dozens of giant air conditioners running nonstop). Now new technologies like closed-loop coolant systems, direct liquid cooling, and even immersion systems that keep servers under water are lessening the power demands of the cooling side of data centers, allowing more of that power to flow to more servers. These technologies may also help cut down some of the extreme resource use data centers require. One study, for example, found that a midsize data center used 300,000 gallons of water per day for cooling. That’s about the amount of water used daily by 1,000 homes. Drennan expects data centers to get more efficient over time, making even “older” ones built just five years ago able to see their power capacities increase. “What they do with that increment of power gets more productive,” he says. “The compute gets better, the algorithms get better, the systems get better, and so the output goes up, even though the required support for that density is the same.” The limiting factors of data center size are the heat they produce and the power they require. Expelling heat from data centers is a significant part of what makes their footprint so large. This requires giant air-conditioning units that can number in the hundreds, with refrigerator-size condensers lined up outside or on the roof, and boxy air chillers pumping cool water into a network of pipes in the building. Outside there are other cooling tower boxes, coolant processors, exhaust filtration units, power transformers, and backup power generators. This equipment ends up in long rows and stacks on the periphery of data center buildings, with room in between for natural airflow and human maintenance. Though cooling technology is improving, the size of the equipment behind that cooling is getting bigger. According to Drennan, just a few years ago a data center building would need extra space equivalent to about half its footprint to house all the cooling equipment required. “Now it’s more like the yard is four times the size of the building footprint,” he says. “You’ve got three or four times the amount of compute inside the building, so you’ve got to have three or four times the amount of equipment to reject that heat and back up the power associated with that.” Hot and power-hungry In the past, data center power demands were manageable. Dolven says a 5-megawatt project could pop up and simply request the power from a utility that was more than happy to sell it. “You could interconnect to the existing grid, you could tap into an adjacent substation that may have already been constructed,” he says. “But when you request 500 megawatts, the scenario shifts dramatically.” New power generation has to be developed. Miles of high-voltage transmission lines have to be constructed, crossing through existing communities and private land. This brings its own permitting and approvals challenges, not to mention community opposition. A recent report found that the data center hot spot of Virginia is expecting its energy demands to double as more data centers come on line. This is leading to higher energy costs for regular consumers in the region. Dolven says many hyperscale data center users are looking at building their own power generation facilities within their data center campuses, essentially making the power they need to operate without relying on, or impacting, the surrounding community’s infrastructure. [Photo: Wonder Valley, courtesy Gensler] That’s the approach at Wonder Valley, a data center in development in rural Alberta, Canada, that bills itself as the largest AI data center industrial park in the world. Planned to have its own off-grid natural gas and geothermal plants on-site while pulling from existing “stranded” sources of natural gas, Wonder Valley aims to be a 7.5-giawatt data center within the next 5 to 10 years. Gensler is the design firm behind the project, and LoBuono says it’s being designed to be as sustainable as possible, utilizing local timber and in a style that reflects the natural surroundings. Wonder Valley’s developer, O’Leary Ventures, argues that by generating much of its own power, the center will offer a net positive to the region, through jobs, tax revenue, and a jolt to the local economy. “The whole point of what we’re trying to pivot toward in this industry is making these buildings more of an asset,” LoBuono says. “Optics are huge in this industry. We shouldn’t be thinking about destroying Manhattan. The buildings get bigger, but the bigger has a benefit.”
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When I recently moved and needed a new mattress, I originally considered one made from memory foam. Then I realized that I didn’t know exactly what “memory foam” was even made of. Some mattresses use fiberglass as a flame retardant. Some others include PFAS “forever chemicals,” plasticizers, or other chemicals linked to health issues, like formaldehyde. What’s inside a mattress, it turns out, takes a fair amount of research to determine. Recently, a handful of brands now make cleaner options. But building a better mattress can be complicatedand expensive. The materials you may want to avoid When fiberglass is used as a flame retardant, the material can spill out when someone removes their mattress cover or if the cover is torn. The tiny glass fibers can break and settle into dust. If you breathe it in, it can irritate your lungs. It’s often present even when a mattress says that it’s “nontoxic.” In California, a new law will ban fiberglass in mattresses beginning in 2027. Still, if you buy a mattress now, theres a chance that it will have the material in it. Fiberglass was supposed to be a replacement for older chemical flame retardants that were commonly used in other furniture and caused other health problems, from endocrine disruption to neurodevelopmental toxicity. After regulations changed, manufacturers started phasing out most chemical flame retardants. But they still might show up in some mattresses, too. In a recent study in Canada that analyzed cheap memory foam mattresses made for children, researchers discovered flame retardants in almost every sample. In one case, a mattress contained a chemical that had been banned in Canada for more than a decade. The mattresses also contained other chemicals of concern, like plasticizers. Using the mattress can make the problem worse. What’s happening is that the body is heating up the mattress, and the chemical comes out more when you heat it up, says Miriam Diamond, a professor at the University of Toronto and one of the authors of the study. The study didnt look for PFAS, the forever chemicals known for use in products like nonstick pans. But PFAS chemicals are also commonly used in fabric on mattresses. I remember when I purchased my last mattress, they said, We’re going to sell you this breathable, water-repellent, stain-resistant mattress protector, and you need to buy it in order to get the warranty, says Diamond. And I thought, no, because those are the code words for PFAS: breathable, stain resistance. In some cases, brands might not even know whats in the product theyre selling. The researchers were surprised to find flame retardants, and speculated that some might be showing up unintentionally because the equipment used to make foam was contaminated from other uses. Foam used in car upholstery, for example, still requires flame retardants, and could sometimes end up on mattress foam by mistake. Mattresses also sometimes contain formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, in adhesives or bonding agents. Memory foam can emit other volatile organic compounds, including toluene, benzene, and acetaldehyde. If youve ever unrolled a bed-in-a-box style foam mattress, youve probably inhaled some of these chemicals. The health impacts are greatest for children and pregnant women; it’s less clear how much long-term impact there might be for most adults. There’s little direct research. (There’s also no equivalent of the children’s mattress study, yet, for mattresses made for adults.) But there’s also a long list of environmental reasons to avoid foam, beginning with the fact that foam is made from petrochemicals derived from crude oil. Workers in factories that make foam can have an increased risk of cancer. At the end of a foam mattress’s life, it typically isn’t recycled. At a landfill, it breaks down into microplastics that can contaminate soil and water. A better mattress With all of this in mind, I looked for alternatives. Some are much pricier than others. (If you have tens of thousands of dollars to drop on a mattress, you can buy a handmade Swedish option made from horsehair, cotton, wool, and traditional springs for $34,000.) But there are several other brands now making more sustainable options, including Avocado Green, Savvy Rest, and Naturepedic. I decided to try a wool-and-latex mattress from Birch (currently $1,968), a brand that spun off from Helix, a popular decade-old mattress brand, because it had particularly good reviews for comfort. Birch sent me a sample to test. The mattress has a layer of individually wrapped coils, two different layers of latex, a layer of wool (wool is naturally fire-resistant), and a cotton cover. The design took time to develop. “Most beds in the industry are made from polyurethane foam that have a variety of different thicknesses and densities and firmness levels where you can mix and match certain things and to kind of get to a really great bed,” says Jerry Lin, one of Helix’s cofounders. “Those options aren’t as available in the natural and organic world. So honestly, it took a very long time for us to find the right mix of latex and organic wool and cotton to layer up a mattress that would be appropriate for the customer and the brand that we were serving.” The wool, for example, comes from a supplier with machinery that made the wool “a little more bouncy,” he says, with more airflow than wool would typically have. The company similarly had to find the right suppliers for each component. The latex is certified by GOLS, the Global Organic Latex Standard, as being made from organic, raw material and meeting standards for worker health and safety. It’s also certified by Greenguard Gold, a label that screens for more than 15,000 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can pollute indoor air. When I unrolled the mattress from the box, there was no chemical smelljust a faintly sweet scent that seemed to come from the wool before it faded. Over the months that I’ve been testing it, it’s held up well; the mattress also has a 25-year warranty. It’s also very comfortable when I’m lying on my back. But as a side sleeper, it isn’t exactly the right fit for me. (That’s not to say it might not work for other side sleepers, but it’s a little more firm than I’d like, and I’ve been waking up with a sore shoulder.) That’s the final environmental challenge: the brand is primarily online, though it’s growing its partnerships with physical stores. Like many consumers, I couldn’t try it out in person first. When I find a new mattress, I’ll likely have to ship another very heavy package across the country. And when I donate this one, I’ll have to hope that it doesn’t eventually end up in a landfill.
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When I worked as a corporate consultant, I had access to all sorts of enterprise software packages that wouldve been cost-prohibitive to most people, but that didnt stop me from trying out free programs. Especially if it meant I could dabble in someone elses area of expertise without getting permission for a software seat license. If youre an armchair urbanist or moonlight as a community activist, you know how important it is to maximize your impact with limited time. Ive been there, Im still there, and I can help. Theres a treasure trove of free web tools online related to urbanism. I dont know of anyone using all of these all the time, but I use some of these every week. Use these resources to demonstrate expertise in your amateurbanism work. Amateurbanism is not a dig at people who arent working professionally in planning, design, or engineering. As someone who gets paid to plan and implement great street networks for all ages and abilities, I want amateur urbanists to be equipped for conversations and presentations about creating happy, healthy communities. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} Google Maps Many earthlings have used Google products, and the satellite views and street views are great ways to ground a conversation about project sites and travel routes. I find that a lot of people dont realize Google Maps has drawing tools, so you can illustrate proposed locations for community gardens, protected bike lanes, festival street closure areas, etc. This is ideal for location-based projects. Google Earth Google Earth brings in the 3D visualization of terrain and buildings. You can model things like where a new playground structure could fit in a park, granny flat additions in backyards, or simulate the changes brought by a proposed rezoning. The measurements also help with space planning. OpenStreetMap Anyone can add overlooked details like accessibility obstacles, safety concerns, parking availability, EV charging infrastructure, and much more to OpenStreetMap. This is a great tool to engage your email list, organization members, or friends. Your team can generate maps that reflect your knowledge and pro-community bias. Envision Tomorrow This is a scenario planning tool funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It models the impacts of growth and development scenarios on factors like land consumption, transportation habits, greenhouse gases, and affordability. If youre comfortable with Google Maps, youll be fine here. You might use Envision Tomorrow to analyze or critique a zoning ordinance, downtown revitalization plan, or transportation plan. Walk Score Youve probably heard of the site that evaluates neighborhood walkability based on proximity to everyday destinations. (They also include bike and transit scores.) This helps assess site accessibility when reviewing development proposals to advocate for community needs like locating affordable housing near transit. But its also a great conversation starter at a county or city level. Realtors love this reference and so should you. Streetmix Streetmix is collaborative street design between residents and city planners. You can model traffic-calming measures, sidewalk expansions, and storefront space. If its a great neighborhood street idea, its designable in Streetmix. highway lighting versus pedestrian lighting sharrows versus bike lanes multiuse paths versus sidewalkbike lane combos right-sized vehicle lanes versus deadly-sized vehicle lanes I cant overhype Streetmix. They make it shockingly simple to expose the silliness of Departments of Transportation (DOTs) while inspiring alternatives to the same old junk infrastructure. Canva Canva turns you into a professional designer. Their templates, graphics, and text options are more than youll ever need for slide decks, reports, social media content, and memes. Use Canva for outreach campaigns, events, ideas, and causes. In fact, stop reading this post, open Canva, and make something. SketchUp SketchUp is a powerful 3D modeling tool, but does have a learning curve. Ive seen it used for park proposals and streetscape ideas for public meetings. But my favorite is when developers use it to illustrate the not-too-scay density of commercial buildings and multifamily housing. UrbanSim If youre comfortable with GitHub and coding, then UrbanSim might be a playground for you. The models begin with detailed data about a region, and then estimate and validate interconnected model components. Public agencies and consultants use this to model how land use policies and transportation changes could impact housing affordability, environmental sustainability, traffic patterns over time, and more. The core platform is open source. Its a higher learning curve, but I thought it was worth including. All right, go out there and digitize your urbanism ideas. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
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In 2025, if youre still relying on spreadsheets and sheer willpower to manage your budgetwhat are you doing? Tightening the purse strings is now in vogue as concerns about tariffs, inflation, job security and market volatility prompt many to pare back their spending, increase their savings, and, naturally, post about it on social media. These days, if youve trained your algorithm well enough, a cursory scroll should be enough to curb any lingering shopping impulses. In 2024, loud budgeting encouraged people to be unapologetically vocal about their financial goals. Earlier this year, everyone started revenge saving, a counter to the revenge spending that took off post-pandemic. No Buy July, is the latest, catchier, iteration of the no-spend challenges that have been around for years. The idea is simple: use the money youd spend on takeaway coffee and other small indulgences to pay down debt, build up savings, or reach some other financial goal. Bonus points if you post about it on social media for added accountability. If youre truly masochistic, one creator recently went viral for sharing another controversial budgeting technique. Recording myself saying things I wanna impulse buy instead of buying them, read the videos closed captions. The goal? To save money and make me hate myself. This one is yet to catch on. Theres a reason so many people are turning to saving challenges to hold each other accountable right now. Saving money is challenging at the best of times. For some, its easier to say Im doing No Buy July than I cant afford that coffee right now. The trends aren’t all talk. The U.S. personal saving ratethe percentage of disposable income saved after taxes and spendinghas risen to 4.5% in May, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data. That is slightly down from 4.9% in April, but up significantly from 3.5% in December. The uptick coincides with growing anxiety, with a recent Santander Bank survey reporting 40% of Americans are more worried about emergency savings than at the start of the year, with 50% concerned about a recession and 53% about inflation. At the same time, the average length of unemployment is now over five months, one month longer than it was last year . The popularity of these saving challenges isnt simply a case of people jumping on the latest trend. It reflects many Americans economic reality. The Consumer Price Index has shot up by 24% since 2020. Moreover, prices don’t look like they’ll drop anytime soon. As President Trump barrels toward his latest tariff deadline, the overall U.S. tariff level is now the highest its been since the 1930s and while prices have been largely stable, they are projected to increase. In this economy, if a viral saving challenge keeps you on track with your financial goals, in for a penny in for a pound.
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When Kendrick Lamar and his longtime creative and business partner Dave Free launched pgLang in 2020, it was under the banner of an “at service company” for creatives. It was an enticing, if somewhat mysterious, modus operandi that led to inquiries in droves. However, the pgLang team quickly realized they didn’t have the infrastructure to offer their services broadly. In the beginning, there were more internal projects including producing Lamar’s music videos and concerts, as well as a smattering of brand work with the likes of Cash App, Chanel, Calvin Klein, and Gatorade. But they didn’t have the bandwidth to operate at scale.Five years later, they do. Project 3 is a new venture within pgLang designed to expand creative resources for businesses. And under the umbrella of Project 3, sits Project 3 Agency, a full-service agency providing creative direction, content creation, production services, brand design and strategy. The creation of Project 3 Agency was powered in large part from the acquisition of international creative studio Frosty, a frequent collaborator of pgLang’s over the years. “For us, it was like, how do we build foundational structures for the business so [we] can last longterm versus trying to do too much at once and being bogged down,” says Free, cofounder of pgLang, on the five-year road to Project 3. “And as we developed [pgLang], we didn’t want to alienate ourselves from commercial business. We wanted to figure out a way to walk hand-in-hand with these companies and give them information, but also learn as we’re working with these companies.” To be sure, pgLang has already been producing work for brands. In fact, they scooped six Cannes Lions Awards, including Independent Agency of the Year, in 2023. While pgLang can be considered the parent company overseeing and aligning all external ventures under a unified vision, the creation of Project 3 and Project 3 Agency allows the teams to direct their focus solely toward other companies. And in those efforts, they feel uniquely positioned to fill a void in the creative agency industry. We see brands now, and one mistake can have you questioning your existence or the audience questioning your purpose, says Cornell Brown, an executive at pgLang and Project 3. For us, there is a confidence that we can bring to this. We have tentacles in so many places: touring, music, when we’re creating merch, when we’re creating artwe have so many inputs that there’s a confidence that comes from seeing all of that around you. Both Free and Brown see Project 3s superpower in helping brands rediscover or, in some instances find for the first time, their true story and purpose. That ethos is baked into the name of the company as Project 3 is a nod to the three pillars of storytelling: the beginning, middle, and end. Brands who will utilize us best are gonna be the ones who aren’t coming for a one-off campaign, Brown says. They’re coming to us to realign strategy and to align them with their purpose. We were seeing companies we admired, but the storytelling was lackluster, Free adds. And a lot of it is because the agency motto became a turnover business of more, more, more. Sometimes that’s great, you need that. But [the storytelling] also has to help people. It has to change the world. It has to latch onto people. Free notes theres no desire for infinite growth with Project 3. He wants the company to scale, but at a pace that puts quality well over quantity to ensure the work aligns with their purpose and integrity. That’s gonna be the marker of how successful this can be because I just don’t see us doing anything with anyone, Free says. We are definitely going for a more premium approach. The goal, as Free explains, is to give brands a foundation for longterm success. When I look at a brand, I’m not thinking about how to get them to the next quarter, he says. I’m thinking about how to get them to the next 10 years. I’m trying to make the best thing that they’ve had that becomes reference material for all the companies. [Image: Project 3] When pgLang launched in 2020, it was very clear there was a desire to have roots across the creative spectrum. Were going to touch every facet of culture, Free says. Theyre starting with Project 3 to build up the commercial side of their business, and to learn from the brands they work with (how they function, why they make the decisions they do, etc.) which can inform other aspects of where pgLang will expand nextthe graphic above providing perhaps a hint of at least how many areas pgLang and Project 3 may go into. We know the trajectory, Free says of pgLangs future. But it’s going to take time, and we’re going to give every piece its own space in its own light. Right now the agency is the foundation that helps set the standard for these other services that we’re going to offer.
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