ABSTRACT
The rapid expansion of AI tools like ChatGPT has increased the processing of digital data, necessitating unprecedented growth in data storage and compute infrastructure. This surge in data usage has created a market for data centers supporting AI platforms. Data center Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are becoming significant urban and economic actors, intertwining land, real estate markets, data storage, and access to technology. By leveraging land near major urban markets and continental backbone fiber optic networks, they generate “data rent” and “computational rent” and then reshape cities through financialized land and real estate profits. Based on analysis of industry materials alongside fieldwork in suburban Washington, D.C., this chapter explores the dynamic relationship between urbanization, technology, and finance. Data centers, though often in suburban and rural peripheries, are crucial to urban cores, influencing policy and perpetuating a feedback loop that increases data demand. We argue that the AI economy relies not only on financializing data and compute technologies but also on financializing land via data center real estate. In doing so, it transforms outlying regions into pivotal nodes of digital capitalism, challenging traditional notions of space, property, and value.
