Post-political clouds: Suspended failure in Google’s data centre development

Abstract

Digital corporations and governments alike are driving a post-political agenda around the expansion of data centres – the infrastructural backbone of expanding cyberworlds. With qualitative methods, the political socioeconomic context of a Google data centre project in Luxembourg was reconstructed. It is seen that the project resulted from both the country’s pursuit of a niche within global economic flows and Google’s international agenda to secure its business position. An eight-year narrative materialised with local dissent on one side, and the refusal of big business and big politics to disclose information to the public on the other. We argue that the ‘suspended failure’ of the project benefitted Google, disrupted local politics, tested the limits of local spatial planning practices, left communities in a state of uncertainty and ensured post-political urban governance throughout.