While it's not data centres, locally we've had this issue but flipped on its head a bit: big electrical facilities were built out 5 minutes out of town on farmland... and then the city grew and now has critical electrical facilities right in the middle of residential areas.

Edit: funny enough, we had a similar situation with a rural gun range. In that case, at least, when they built the suburban neighbourhood next door the buyers did have a clause in the purchase contract that acknowledged that they were purchasing property next to an existing range and that there would be noise. They were generally fine with it until the national police force started renting the range and doing full-auto practice on Saturday mornings :D

It's not a matter of latency, or travel time as some of the latter comments mention (albeit sarcastically).

It's mostly about power. You can't just select a place and say "I want 5MW (or 10MW) of electricity, just here".

Fiber is thin, easy to lay down and flexible. Power cables are not. Also power planning is apparently hard.

But think about that 5 minutes extra commute datacenter workers would need to have! /s