Arlington is a community about seven miles southwest of Riverside, California, that is part of the Inland Empire, which is east of the Los Angeles and Orange County metropolitan areas.

[5] The community was served by the Riverside–Arlington Line, which ran from Riverside to Corona, and eventually became a part of the greater Pacific Electric Railway.

Parkview Community Hospital, located on Jackson Street just north of Magnolia Avenue, has served the area since its founding in 1958.

[10] Major suburban development transformed the Arlington area after World War II, occurring in phases that continued through the 1980s.

However, the citrus farming areas are typically cooler at night, as they lie outside of the urban heat island, which is associated with warmer conditions.

The area is at the western edge of the influx of monsoonal moisture that brings periodic high humidity, thunderstorms and rainfall during summer.

Despite being in close proximity to California Baptist University, a four-year Christian higher education institution on the eastern fringes of the area, and UC Riverside and La Sierra University to the east and west, respectively, educational attainment in Arlington is generally low, with some subsets of the neighborhood containing hundreds of people lacking a single individual who has attained a master's degree or higher, according to City Data.

Major commuting patterns include Van Buren Boulevard heading north to the Ontario area and Magnolia Avenue and the 91 Freeway eastbound towards Downtown Riverside, San Bernardino and other employment centers in the eastern Inland Empire.

Significant employers within the Arlington area include Parkview Community Hospital, Galleria at Tyler (a large indoor shopping mall), retail outlets of varying sizes, restaurants, basic professional and staple services, and public and private K-12 educational facilities.