The fight over data centres at the heart of Japanese cities

{"text":[[{"start":9.15,"text":"When Munekazu and Erin Tanikawa got the keys to their brand new apartment in a Tokyo commuter town in 2022, little did the married couple know that a land deal was being finalised that would upend their lives."}],[{"start":23,"text":"Four months after moving in, a special-purpose vehicle, backed by Canadian pension fund CPP Investments, US asset manager Fidelity and local trading house Mitsui & Co, bought the parking lot in front of their balcony to develop a 52-metre-tall data centre."}],[{"start":40.8,"text":"Since then, their ¥50mn ($312,000) property is estimated to have lost about a quarter of its value. The couple complain about expected heat and noise from the planned data centre, and the risks associated with the storage of tonnes of fuel — for a backup generator — on their doorstep. "}],[{"start":57.849999999999994,"text":"They have gathered more than 13,000 signatures for their petition against its construction and launched a legal case against the entity that approved it. “I knew something would be built there but I never thought it would be a data centre,” said Erin Tanikawa."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":69.8,"text":"Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has placed AI at the heart of her economic growth strategy and analysts expect a huge surge in data centres. There are an estimated 300 data centres in Japan and the $23bn market for such facilities is expected to grow almost 50 per cent in size by 2030, with 90 per cent of sites concentrated in the densely populated Greater Tokyo and Osaka regions, according to JLL, a real estate company. "}],[{"start":96.5,"text":"“This is the AI gold rush,” said Satoshi Oikawa, a lawyer representing citizen groups in two cases opposing data centres bordering their residences."}],[{"start":106.2,"text":"While communities, often rural, have complained about data centres in the US and Europe, the backlash in Japan is centred on facilities embedded in the heart of residential and commercial areas. "}],[{"start":117.8,"text":"This reflects mountainous Japan’s constricted land availability — a data centre is even planned next to the capital’s famous Tokyo Tower — and foreshadows risks for other nations as AI drives data processing demand."}],[{"start":130.95,"text":"Local residents, academics and lawyers said the disputes exposed Japan’s outdated building code as well as the lure of deep-pocketed data centre developers for cash-strapped local authorities."}],[{"start":142.75,"text":"While those challenges are global, critics claim that Japan is idiosyncratic in classifying data centres as offices rather than factories or warehouses and suffers from a bubble-era hangover of loose zoning rules and light-touch urban planning, which prioritise developers over communities. "}],[{"start":160.5,"text":"Critics argue the intensive power, water use and large volume of machinery in data centres make them more akin to industrial facilities than offices. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

• Satoshi Oikawa sits at a table, wearing a grey jacket, with artwork visible on the wall behind him.
• Erin Tanikawa points with a pen to a specific area on a colour-coded land-use map.

"}],[{"start":170.2,"text":"“Japan’s urban planning, land use and building standards systems are particularly old. Precisely because they are old, they were never designed to anticipate recent uses like data centres,” said Tetsuharu Oba, a professor specialising in urban management at Kyoto University. “There is a need to update the system.”"}],[{"start":189.6,"text":"The law has not been designed “to protect people’s lives”, said Oikawa, describing data centres as “the AI era warehouse or factory”."}],[{"start":198.4,"text":"Japan’s biggest data centre operator NTT Data, whose affiliate NTT Facilities is the project designer, admitted the need for regulatory overhaul. “The rapid scaling and increasing sophistication of modern data centres have made it harder to view them as equivalent to conventional office buildings,” it said. "}],[{"start":217.1,"text":"An official at the land ministry said there were no immediate plans to create a new classification for data centres in the Building Standards Act and local authorities could use other laws to restrict unwanted projects."}],[{"start":229.29999999999998,"text":"The disputed data centre is in Inzai City’s Chiba New Town Chuo; and Inzai City, like many towns around the world, is keen to collect property taxes from data centres and investors. "}],[{"start":240.35,"text":"“This is the frontier of capitalism but is it really good for this area over 50 or 100 years?” said Toshiyuki Takita, a member of the Chiba prefectural assembly, the broader region in which Inzai is located. "}],[{"start":253.45,"text":"Inzai 5, the special purpose company that owns the land, said that it followed all relevant laws and would try to minimise noise and landscape impact. It added that the developer of the Tanikawas’ condominium had agreed to tell buyers a high-rise structure could be built there. "}],[{"start":269.4,"text":"The UK’s Colt Data Centre Services is the developer and operator of the data centre. There are several other data centres near the Tanikawas’ apartment, including four developed by Colt, at least one of which Microsoft uses. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":281.5,"text":"Following public backlash to the approval, Inzai City authorities did ask Colt to discontinue the project and offered it alternative plots of land. Colt did not want to delay the project and argued it would be more efficient to be near other data centres, according to meeting minutes."}],[{"start":298.4,"text":"Inzai 5 said that “there were no other candidate sites that could be acquired” at the time the land became available and the proposal to move “lacked sufficient specificity”."}],[{"start":309.75,"text":"Inzai City said in a statement that under the rule of law it could not deny approval to the project but acknowledged data centre expansion has created “major issues” for residents and the issues “cannot be adequately addressed within the framework of current rules”."}],[{"start":325.55,"text":"Bureaucrats and Inzai residents have criticised the developer for failing to secure community support for the project, only starting to engage with the community three years after it first approached Inzai City officials in June 2022. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

• Munekazu and Erin Tanikawa review information together on a laptop at a table, appearing focused.
• A construction worker in safety gear stands in a parking lot surrounded by traffic cones, with construction materials and equipment visible.

"}],[{"start":340.3,"text":"Some are reminded of the government push to mega-solar power plants after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, resulting in huge overdevelopment. Takaichi is now moving to crack down on their development."}],[{"start":352.45,"text":"“The national government wants rapid development at almost any cost,” said Munekazu Tanikawa. “They seem to want to normalise this, assuming that the Japanese public will gradually get used to it. But the scale of the impact is expanding too quickly.”"}],[{"start":375.55,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1777862180_9403.mp3"}