Logistics Sprawl and Urban Freight Planning Issues in a Major Gateway City - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 49

Map. 1 Greater Los Angeles

metropolitan area (with Orange County and its 3 million residents), and the whole
region, which also includes the ''Inland Empire,'' i.e. the recently urbanized parts
of Riverside and San Bernardino counties (another 4 million residents, in the
eastern part of the region), as shown in Map 1 .
Los Angeles presents a unique case in the study of urban freight and urban
freight policy. Two aspects are especially worthy of attention: the sheer demo-
graphic size of the region, and its role as a maritime gateway for goods entering
and leaving the region and the country. The result is a huge amount of goods, and
the transportation equipment required to carry them, within the region. Vans,
trucks and trains are an inescapable part of the daily life of Los Angeles. The
number of warehouses has increased tremendously in the region over the past
twenty years, because of an increase in the number of enormous distribution
centers handling goods imported from overseas, and because many warehousing
activities that were hitherto carried out in-house are now outsourced and managed
outside the production sites through the intermediary of a logistics provider.
Angelinos (as the residents of Los Angeles are known) who work in the logistics
and transport sectors, or who live close to freight facilities and suffer from their
impacts, know the current importance of freight and logistics activities for the city.
However, many others, who live in more residential or affluent neighbourhoods,
are unaware of these daily freight routines, taking the goods they shop for or have
delivered to their door for granted.
This chapter is devoted to the location of freight facilities in Los Angeles and the
policy issues related to the management of freight facilities and freight movements
in the region. After Sect. 2 , which presents the literature and background, Sect. 3
presents freight data for the Los Angeles region, and is followed by the results of a