If the 2010s zoning fights were about apartments, the 2020s fights are increasingly about infrastructure disguised as real estate. Data centers—driven by cloud computing and the AI boom—are land-intensive, power-hungry, and politically explosive when they land near neighborhoods. Zoning is now the front line. Northern Virginia is the case study because it’s one of the world’s most concentrated data center regions. As expansion accelerated, the conflict shifted from abstract
