HomeCountiesArticlesMethodologyContactResearch and commentary on why we do what we do: AI's impact on local economies, how communities can prepare, and where StrataHelm stands.
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The default response to a proposed data center is a moratorium — a posture, not a plan. This briefing argues for the harder, more valuable move: architecting the deal. Closed-loop cooling, over-provisioned on-site clean generation, transparent public reporting, and enforceable remediation deadlines — written into the community's own terms — turn an anxiety into an asset.
The economy can grow while your county falls apart. Why national averages mislead, which counties experience a boom as a bust, and what to measure when "the economy is fine" is not true on Main Street.
Youngstown, Flint, Gary, Rochester: what the historical record shows about towns built around one employer, the repeatable four-stage pattern of collapse, and why the damage lasts forty years.
"Will AI take our jobs?" has no honest answer without a date attached. A three-horizon framework for municipal leaders — the next 24 months, years two to seven, and beyond — and what each horizon asks of a city.
If slowing AI down delays a cure, the people who die in the gap are real. An essay on the identifiable-victim bias and the moral arithmetic the AI-slowdown debate keeps skipping.
StrataHelm measures AI-driven job disruption county by county — yet we are unapologetically optimistic about AI itself. Our position is not "slow the technology down." It is "speed up the conversation."