THE PRODUCTION OF Green
Politics, Practices and Pitfalls of Urban Greening Governance
Smart homes, smart buildings, smart cities— "smartness" and AI have become the prefix to nearly every aspect of our lives, promising seamless, instantaneous solutions and interactions facilitated by an invisible "cloud."
The cloud metaphor suggests a frictionless, immaterial flow of information powering pervasive intelligence. Yet, what if this cloud is not ethereal but a vast, energy-hungry, and heavily mechanized landscape grounded in specific geographies, often in remote mountain areas, with extensive environmental and socioeconomic impacts?
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The cloud is firmly rooted in a complex material reality: a planetary-scale network of telecommunications infrastructure, data centers, mining sites, and (un)renewable energy landscapes. The escalating AI revolution has intensified the socio-environmental pressures exerted by these landscapes, characterized by prodigious energy and water consumption. What's more, cloud infrastructure has evolved from a mere technical utility into a critical geopolitical asset. It now plays a pivotal role in shaping national sovereignty, ensuring data security, reinforcing techno-feudal power structures, and informing territorial strategies in an era of intensifying geo-political competition.
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What is green made of?
How does green become good?
What is the cost of green?
However, a closer examination of the green reveals a far more intricate and contentious urban ecology. What appears as lush terrain in satellite imagery often proves to be extensive swathes of green plastic dust shields enveloping demolition debris —remnants of demolished urban villages awaiting conversion into actual green spaces.
To meet the enormous energy demands of data centers, the once desolate mountains have been transformed into intricate operational landscapes of energy. These are adorned with expansive wind and solar farms, complemented by peak-regulating thermal power infrastructure to ensure grid stability amidst the inherent intermittency of renewable energy sources.
However, the data centers and renewable energy industries have not brought the anticipated development and prosperity to the local communities. Instead, these industries prioritize automation and unmanned operations. The ongoing depopulation in Zhangjiazhuang continues to intensify, urging us to rethink and recalibrate the approach to the 'production of the cloud.
While flying away, you might notice that Beijing appears to be one of the greenest cities on aerial maps, where its urban expanse is bathed in synthetic hues of verdant green.