Date of Award

Spring 6-1-2026

Document Type

Thesis (Undergraduate)

Department

Geography

First Advisor

Luis Alvarez León

Second Advisor

Jonathan Winter

Abstract

In recent years data center construction has drastically increased around the world, especially in the U.S. Building out the infrastructure of the digital economy consumes water, electricity, and capital at great scale, drawing resources from public use towards regimes of private accumulation. This thesis takes Metro Atlanta as a particular microcosm within international digital infrastructure buildout, first worth investigating on its own terms, but also for lessons that may reach across the broader geography of the digital economy. This thesis takes up concerns with the politics of data centers siting, how these projects fit into narratives of economic development, and how the public is enrolled into tax and utility burdens towards private accumulation. It approaches the research question: How do political, economic, and social relations assemble data infrastructure in Georgia? This thesis also responds to the sub-questions: (a) What are the political, economic, infrastructural, and social characteristics of sites where data centers are assembled in Georgia? (b) How and why do residents, government officials, and corporations resist or support data center projects in Georgia? (c) Why is data center construction booming in Georgia — and what can this tell us about the intersection of digital capitalism and racial capitalism? Through qualitative interviews, archival research, and document analysis, this project answers these questions through the lens of two local sites: a QTS data center in Howell Station neighborhood in Atlanta, and a Facebook/Meta data center near Social Circle, Georgia. This work traces the ways legal technologies and fiscal politics mediate the political geography of data centers in these sites, and the multi-scalar entanglement of racial capitalism with digital capitalism at and well-beyond these nodes in the digital economy.

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