?Warehouses in their backyards?: when Amazon expands, these communities pay the price

Last year, with little warning, a new Amazon delivery station brought the rumble of semi-trailer trucks and delivery vans to Chicago's Gage Park neighborhood.

The warehouse, located within 1,500 feet of five schools, is in a residential area where more than half the people within a mile have low incomes and nearly 90% are Hispanic.

The neighborhood is one of hundreds across the US where Amazon's dramatic expansion has set in motion huge commercial operations. Residents near the new warehouses say they face increased air pollution from trucks and vans, more dangerous streets for kids walking or biking and other quality-of-life issues such as clogged traffic and near-constant noise.

Like Gage Park, the majority of these neighborhoods are home to a greater number of residents of color and people with low-incomes than the typical neighborhood in the same urban area, according to a Consumer Reports (CR) investigation.

José Mendez, who has lived in Gage Park for 18 years, says his 5am commute now involves battling semis for space on a nearby residential street. His wife has called Amazon to complain, but the trucks still come past.

Uriel Estrada, a college student who lives with his family a few blocks from the warehouse, says having Amazon in the neighborhood isn't all bad - packages arrive much faster than before. Still, he says, the noise and traffic are distracting. "In my house, you can feel it shake because there's a bunch of trucks passing by," he says.

To examine Amazon's nationwide delivery network, CR combined commercially available information about the company's warehouses with data from the Census Bureau and the Environmental Protection Agency. In partnership with the Guardian, CR also visited neighborhoods near Amazon warehouses in Chicago and the Los Angeles area. Here are key findings from the investigation: