The Business Atlas is a community resource focused on better understanding business
basics, constraints and opportunities in the Inland Empire. Given the differing
definitions of just what constitutes the “Inland Empire”, and recognizing that,
in any event, the region cannot be understood in isolation from the dynamic surrounding
markets that collectively constitute what we loosely define as Southern California,
most Atlas data includes all eight of these counties:
Imperial
Kern Los Angeles Orange
Riverside
San Bernardino San Diego Ventura.
In a related attempt to standardize Atlas information, it was decided that primary
focus would be on collecting, displaying and analyzing data at the 5-difit zip code
level. This represents a compromise between representations at the county level
(highly aggregated data) and at the block group level (highly disaggregated data).
There are departures from this norm, for example when examining school data, where
school district boundaries are more appropriate.
The Business Atlas provides background
information on Where is the
Inland Empire? and a
History of the Inland Empire. It examines information on its People,
using demographic data regarding population, age distributions, race and ethnicity,
education attainment levels, and various health and lifestyle characteristics. It
looks at Income and Employment,
including as well consumer expenditure levels and patterns. It investigates
Housing in the Inland Empire, looking at profiles of these markets and the
dynamics of changes over time. The core section on
Business and Industry identifies the major sectors and industries, and then
focuses on particular sectors (Not-for-Profits, School Districts), industries (Aeorospace),
or characteristics (employment concentration; poverty; logistics centers; job centers;
minority markets). The concluding section ponders
Our Future, surmising possible ranges of projected growth. It also should
be noted that there is a
Resources and Tools section for those seeking more information on spatial
data sources, GIS software choices, and selective topics in spatial analysis.
Please note that there is a companion
Global Trade and Competitiveness Atlas, which takes a macro-view to explore
seemingly distant international trends that, nonetheless, quite likely have a direct
impact on your particular sector, industry and business. There is data for about
800 industries, for each of 200 countries, over about a 20-year span.
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