Article: We Were Warned About the Ports
https://prospect.org/economy/we-were-warned-about-the-ports/
As the American economy became increasingly reliant on goods made in East Asia, so too did it rely on the only port that could readily receive them, L.A./Long Beach, which strained against its own limitations. The expansive nearby population of Southern California, once seen as an asset to finding cheap and ample labor to unload containers and drive trucks and staff warehouses, soon became a hindrance to expansion, as land around the ports was ringed with housing, making growth impossible. Instead, the ports began expanding out into the sea, with major terraforming initiatives to conjure more dock space from the ocean floor, a process that still couldn’t keep up with the strains of a growing e-commerce sector that relied overwhelmingly on Chinese manufacturing. (This led to a separate problem during the supply crunch: where to put the empty containers. Often they were dumped in residential neighborhoods, towering above modest homes and subdivisions.)