Logistics Sprawl and Urban Freight Planning Issues in a Major Gateway City - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 61

Fig. 3 Eight county area: location of warehouses, 1998-2009

5 Local Governments and Warehouses in the Los Angeles
Area

What account is taken of freight and logistics activities in planning processes? In
one of the few academic studies of local planning and freight issues, Cidell ( 2011 ,
p. 832) notes the inherent challenges facing local governments confronted with the
development of freight facilities: ''in a world of flows and networks, [planners]
work within bounded territories.'' Local planners take land use, zoning and per-
mitting decisions based on a spatial mental representation of the different stages of
the history of their municipality's development, from initial rural settlements to
rapid residential and commercial development. The recent sudden addition of
industrial (mostly logistics) activities to this pattern encounters mixed reactions,
mostly unenthusiastic. New jobs are welcome, but the low per-acre tax revenues
and absence of sales taxes associated with this type of development are often
resented. Looking at how municipalities in Northern California cope with distri-
bution centers, Hesse ( 2002 ) also notes a reluctance to attract logistics land uses,
even though, according to the surveys he conducted there, most cities, even those
with a focus on high technology do not actually discourage goods distribution
firms. He also notes, interestingly, that environmental issues related to freight
activities are more inclined to generate a degree of indifference than much con-
cern. In Atlanta (Dablanc and Ross 2012 ), counties and municipalities have a