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Analysis

Socioeconomic Clusters of Data Center Locations

Socioeconomic Context Clusters

We used k-means clustering as a descriptive analysis to group data centers by the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of their locations. Each data center was treated as one observation, with features assigned from its census tract. The analysis identified four socioeconomic context clusters.

Cluster 1

  • Sites: 456 (31.0% of 1,472)
  • Top states: IA (60); OH (57); VA (46)
  • Top MSAs: Columbus, OH (52); Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA (40); Omaha, NE-IA (40)
  • Top operators: Meta (49); Amazon Web Services (45); Google (36)
  • Median sqft: 166,120
  • Demographic signal: median household income $109,075; poverty 6.6%; unemployment 3.3%; bachelor-plus 43.6%; uninsured 4.8%; housing burden 45.0%
  • Race / ethnicity: White non-Hispanic 78.3%; Black non-Hispanic 3.9%; Hispanic 8.2%; Asian non-Hispanic 4.4%
  • SVI overall percentile rank: 0.25

Cluster 2

  • Sites: 294 (20.0% of 1,472)
  • Top states: OR (63); WA (60); TX (47)
  • Top MSAs: Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN (22); San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX (20); Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV (18)
  • Top operators: Amazon Web Services (62); Microsoft (22); Meta (8)
  • Median sqft: 126,990
  • Demographic signal: median household income $78,760; poverty 13.4%; unemployment 4.7%; bachelor-plus 22.1%; uninsured 14.4%; housing burden 44.5%
  • Race / ethnicity: White non-Hispanic 41.1%; Black non-Hispanic 5.8%; Hispanic 45.4%; Asian non-Hispanic 3.5%
  • SVI overall percentile rank: 0.73

Cluster 3

  • Sites: 309 (21.0% of 1,472)
  • Top states: TX (59); VA (42); NJ (22)
  • Top MSAs: Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX (45); Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV (44); New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ (24)
  • Top operators: Google (19); Flexential (18); Amazon Web Services (17)
  • Median sqft: 112,205
  • Demographic signal: median household income $89,798; poverty 13.6%; unemployment 6.1%; bachelor-plus 47.6%; uninsured 9.0%; housing burden 53.9%
  • Race / ethnicity: White non-Hispanic 39.1%; Black non-Hispanic 25.2%; Hispanic 17.5%; Asian non-Hispanic 12.0%
  • SVI overall percentile rank: 0.52

Cluster 4

  • Sites: 413 (28.1% of 1,472)
  • Top states: VA (212); CA (81); NJ (23)
  • Top MSAs: Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV (212); San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA (72); New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ (27)
  • Top operators: Amazon Web Services (83); Digital Realty (44); Equinix (27)
  • Median sqft: 128,835
  • Demographic signal: median household income $176,817; poverty 5.4%; unemployment 3.1%; bachelor-plus 67.4%; uninsured 4.5%; housing burden 37.3%
  • Race / ethnicity: White non-Hispanic 39.9%; Black non-Hispanic 7.3%; Hispanic 13.2%; Asian non-Hispanic 33.6%
  • SVI overall percentile rank: 0.23