Pressure on London's Green Belt

The quiet town of Potters Bar, located just outside London, unexpectedly finds itself at the center stage in the global race for artificial intelligence. Local residents are fighting to protect the "green belt", a green belt of farmland, forests and meadows that surrounds the English capital, from the growing demand for infrastructure dedicated to AI.

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence requires more and more computational resources, often hosted in large data centers. These data centers, in turn, require large spaces, raising concerns about their impact on the environment and landscape, especially in protected areas such as the green belt.