The Mega Mega Warehouse Map

The growth of online shopping has led to a huge rise in the construction of massive regional distribution and storage facilities around the country. The location of these mega warehouses can have a huge impact on local communities, leading to increased levels of air and noise pollution and increased traffic.

Mega warehouses tend to get built where zoning is welcoming and land is cheap. This means that the impact of these storage facilities is often felt more by those on low incomes and by communities of color. 

According to the Sierra Club there are currently 39,116 warehouses and distribution centers larger than 100,000 square feet in the United States. You can view the distribution of these mega warehouses on the Sierra Club's interactive map Is There a Mega Warehouse Near You? 

The map shows the locations of 'mega warehouses' with a footprint over 100,000 square feet. When zoomed out the map uses arrowed placename labels to highlight six urban hotspots where the Sierra Club has analyzed the location of mega warehouses in relation to the local community's racial and economic makeup.

For example in California's Inland Empire a scatterplot is used to show how 75.1% of mega warehouses in the region are in majority non-white areas and 20.2% of mega warehouses are in majority non-white & low income neighborhoods. Select an individual warehouse on the map and you can also find out the number of residents living within 5 miles of its location, the percentage of those residents who are non-white and the percentage who are low-income.