Urban infrastructure and fossil fuel industrial legacy drive US data center siting

Abstract Data centers form the physical backbone of the digital economy, yet their integration into the US urban fabric remains poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that data centers are an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon, with 97.5% of facilities situated in metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, challenging the prevailing narratives of ‘rural cloud expansion’. Their spatial logic is driven by the nameplate capacity of local power plants and, to a lesser extent, by broadband quality, retired coal plants, information technology employment and natural hazards. The reliance on local power systems embeds data center siting within state-level energy generation patterns, amplifying geographic contrasts in the sustainability of the data center boom. Population-based projections of data centers’ growth indicate that the digital transition will reinforce existing urban hierarchies rather than catalyze decentralization. These findings suggest a path-dependent evolution linked to existing infrastructure and fossil fuel industrial legacy, posing considerable challenges to urban livability. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution Access options Subscribe to this journal Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles $119.00 per year only $9.92 per issue Buy this article - Purchase on SpringerLink - Instant access to the full article PDF. USD 39.95 Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout Data availability The primary commercial dataset was obtained from datacentermap.com and is subject to licensing restrictions. Processed datasets sufficient to reproduce the analyses are available via GitHub at https://github.com/dynamicalsystemslaboratory/Data-centers-siting-across-U.S.-cities. 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Author information Authors and Affiliations Contributions C.A., O.L.B., A.R. and M.P. conceptualized the research; C.A., O.L.B. and M.P. performed research; C.A. and O.L.B. analyzed the data; C.A. and O.L.B. coded the software; C.A. and O.L.B. led data curation; M.P. provided resources and supervision; C.A., O.L.B. and A.R. handled visualizations; C.A., O.L.B. and M.P. wrote the paper; and C.A., O.L.B., A.R. and M.P. edited the paper. Corresponding author Ethics declarations Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests. Peer review Reviewer recognition Nature Cities thanks Olivier Coutard, Ricardo Martinez and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available. Additional information Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Supplementary information Supplementary Information (download PDF ) Supplementary Discussions 1–12, Figs. 1–17 and Tables 1–6. Rights and permissions Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. About this article Cite this article Ancona, C., Lauber Bonomo, O., Rozhkov, A. et al. Urban infrastructure and fossil fuel industrial legacy drive US data center siting. Nat Cities (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-026-00487-z Received: Accepted: Published: Version of record: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-026-00487-z