We mapped the warehouse takeover of the Inland Empire. The results are overwhelming

[Demovictory9]

I recently drove past the Amazon warehouse that provides the Orange county region ( I think it was in Rialto). that thing was HUGE. if you ever want take a route 66 drive...check out the warehouses along the way.


Forty percent of the nation’s goods now travel through the Inland Empire,

We mapped the warehouse takeover of the Inland Empire. The results are overwhelming

Over the last 20 years, I’ve watched open land and farmland in the Inland Empire become a gridlocked sea of warehouses. These giant boxes have worsened traffic, air quality, cancer rates and chronic health problems in the region and have cemented poverty here. The industry once touted as a blue-collar miracle is instead filled with temp jobs rife with health and safety issues, wage theft, little job security and a future in which robotic workers are predicted to reign supreme.

The Inland Empire is at a breaking point. More than a dozen groups throughout its vast 27,000-square-mile region are attempting to pass moratoriums on warehouse construction. But conservative politics and development money continue to win out. City councils in what are known as “diesel death zones” routinely sacrifice the health of residents for economic benefit in areas that often have Black and Latino populations.

Last year the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability at Pitzer College, which I oversee, began creating an animated map of warehouse growth in the Inland Empire that reaches back to 1975. Recently published, the map makes warehouses in the Inland Empire look like the spread of a disease. What began at a couple of World War II military logistics sites in San Bernardino and Mira Loma, a town in Riverside County, has grown into a behemoth with millions of square feet of warehouse space.

Strategic land acquisitions near airports and rail yards created an Inland Empire logistics hub that is visible from space. By the 1980s, agriculture was considered a relic industry and the Inland Empire region had been deemed to be “dirt cheap.” The abundance of land combined with a large immigrant population of low educational attainment made for a narrative that warehousing was a natural fit. Besides, the nation’s largest port complex is an acceptable drive away. With the emergence of online shopping in the 1990s, warehouse construction began to skyrocket.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-05-01/inland-empire-warehouse-growth-map-environment