Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is asking the City Council to impose a temporary moratorium on new artificial-intelligence data centers as the city rewrites rules for their development.

Johnson said he will work with the City Council to enact the moratorium. He also signed an executive order directing city agencies to tighten the rules around data-center permitting, air pollution, and noise.

"A temporary moratorium is critical, because it will ensure that new data centers do not move forward while the City Council contemplates the deliberate, comprehensive process of developing the protections Chicagoans have called for and deserve," Johnson said at a press conference Tuesday.

The order requires all new development proposals containing a data center to go through a cross-departmental review process that will consider environmental impacts and neighborhood effects.

It also establishes an Interdepartmental Data Center Environment and Community Protection Task Force, which Johnson said will develop updates to Chicago's municipal code around permitting, zoning, impact controls, licensing, and reporting standards.

Johnson's push for a task force comes amid a growing community-level backlash to data center development. New York set a one-year moratorium on hyperscale data centers earlier this summer, and dozens of city and county governments have taken similar steps, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"Chicago is a tech hub that embraces innovation, but never at the expense of our health, safety, or our natural environment," Johnson said.