?Pollution everywhere?: how one-click shopping is creating Amazon warehouse towns

Three generations of Arah Parker's family have lived in her pleasant, yellow-hued home, where there used to be a clear view of the San Gabriel mountains from the kitchen window.

There used to be - until the country's hunger for online shopping swallowed the neighborhood.

Four massive Amazon warehouses - ranging from 500,000 to nearly 900,000 sq ft - now surround this historically Black community, as do distribution centers for Target, Under Armour, Monster Energy and Keeco textiles. Her home is now boxed in on three sides by concrete block buildings and the quiet road out front has been paved into a four-lane expressway rumbling with delivery trucks.

The ancient mountains are obscured by a "big, block wall" and more often than not, they are further shrouded by a noxious layer of haze belched up by the trucks.

"To watch the transformation, it really has been disheartening," said Parker, 39.

The Inland Empire region, where Parker lives, is now one of the biggest national hubs for the e-commerce industry. The changes it has undergone are being replicated in cities and towns across the country.

To feed the one-click, one-day delivery demands of the nation, new warehouses are opening quickly, often in Black and brown neighborhoods. They sometimes chew up entire suburban blocks and communities in the process, crowding roadways with delivery trucks and vans and air space with cargo planes, clouding the air with more pollution.