RIVERSIDE — The Inland Empire, overwhelmed by unchecked growth and plagued by helter-skelter development, is by far the nation's worst example of urban sprawl, a team of researchers said Thursday.
For 20 years, the price of homes closer to the coast has skyrocketed, forcing hundreds of thousands of families to search inland for affordable housing. Many landed -- in Riverside or San Bernardino, Corona or Ontario -- with the hope that they had left behind the ills of urban life.
Instead, the study says, they have found themselves in a far-flung dystopia, a region whose schools and roads cannot keep up with the number of new residents, a sea of strip malls and chain restaurants, all surrounded by just as much traffic, pollution and congestion as they confronted in the city.
The three-year study was conducted by researchers from Rutgers and Cornell universities and released by a Washington coalition of organizations interested in growth, known as Smart Growth America.
The report faulted the Inland Empire for everything from its lack of economic and social cores -- two-thirds of the massive region lives at least 10 miles from a central business district -- to a haphazard, poorly connected road system that makes walking and bicycling perilous.
Even the region's high number of traffic fatalities -- 49 of every 100,000 people die each year in car crashes -- is due to endless hours spent negotiating highways and packed, high-speed arterials, the study concluded.
Barbara McCann, a spokeswoman for Smart Growth America, said the Inland Empire fits the dreaded metropolitan tag: "There is no 'there' there."
Home building and economic development organizations, which have defeated several recent attempts to limit growth in the Inland Empire, disputed the study's results.
"I would call it a blatant joke," said Borre Winckel, executive director of the Building Industry Assn.'s Riverside County chapter. "I am not impressed by it."
On Thursday afternoon in Chino Hills, on the western rim of San Bernardino County, scores of people were having lunch at tables assembled in front of what passes for a central gathering place -- a giant strip mall called Crossroads Marketplace. It features a Costco, a Sport Chalet, a mattress store and an enormous Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse emblazoned with a slogan: "More of Everything."
