About Dirt to Data: Data Centers and AI Infrastructure
AI isn't weightless. It runs on concrete, cooling, and community consent. Dirt to Data is Suhail Tayyeb's ongoing analysis of the real estate, power, and infrastructure decisions behind data centers and AI. He built PACTS and the AI Infrastructure Decision Language to test whether a specific opportunity is real, or just announced.
Suhail is director of NYU's Center for the Sustainable Built Environment and a Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate.
A permit is something an agency gives you. Permission is something much bigger.
Suhail introduces DLPT, Discretion, Legitimacy, Process Depth, and Tradeoffs, the deeper approvals diagnostic behind PACTS, and explains why durable permission has effectively become infrastructure.
Dirt to Data is hosted by Suhail Tayyeb, Director at NYU's Center for the Sustainable Built Environment and a clinical assistant professor at the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate.
Dirt to Data: https://fromdirttodata.com (https://fromdirttodata.com)
Suhail Tayyeb: https://suhailtayyeb.com (https://suhailtayyeb.com)
13 Oct 2026
Why Power Timing Is Harder Than Power Availability
The utility, the developer, and the customer can all say they're on schedule and still miss each other completely.
Suhail closes out GTSQT with Timeline Certainty and makes the case that in AI infrastructure, power isn't simply electricity. It's electricity plus time.
Dirt to Data is hosted by Suhail Tayyeb, Director at NYU's Center for the Sustainable Built Environment and a clinical assistant professor at the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate.
Dirt to Data: https://fromdirttodata.com (https://fromdirttodata.com)
Suhail Tayyeb: https://suhailtayyeb.com (https://suhailtayyeb.com)
9 Oct 2026
The AI Infrastructure Shock: Why Compute, Power and Capital Are Out of Sync | Live Keynote
Compute is moving at software speed. Infrastructure is not.
Recorded live at the NYU Data Center & AI Infrastructure Forum on October 7, 2026, this special Dirt to Data episode features my opening keynote, The AI Infrastructure Shock.
The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is creating a synchronization challenge across compute, power, capital, construction, and permission. Announced projects are multiplying, but turning those announcements into operational infrastructure requires far more than land and a megawatt figure.
In this keynote, I examine why a site is not a project, why power is not the same as deliverable capacity, how permission has become infrastructure, why the Missing Middle matters, and what separates demand from bankable projects.
I also explore how accelerating compute cycles could affect long-term infrastructure investments and where durable value may ultimately accrue.
Recorded: October 7, 2026 | New York City
Dirt to Data: https://fromdirttodata.com (https://fromdirttodata.com)
Suhail Tayyeb: https://suhailtayyeb.com (https://suhailtayyeb.com)
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