THE GENIE IN THE BOTTLE: THE INTERSTATE SYSTEM AND URBAN PROBLEMS, 1939-1957

Abstract

This article reviews the history of the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways and its relation to urban problems from 1939 to 1957. Thomas H. MacDonald, chief of the Bureau of Public Roads, and his top aide, Herbert S. Fairbank, were the impetus for an interstate highway system. MacDonald and Fairbank came away from visits to Germany in 1936 regarding the German autobahn as impressive, but not as a model for America. The autobahn stayed out of the cities, which is where the United States was experiencing its greatest highway problems. Their 1939 report to Congress called for a toll-free system of direct interregional highways. They saw express highways as a way of reversing the decline of American cities, restoring decadent areas, and preserving the central business districts. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the national Interregional Highway Committee in 1941 to elaborate on this master plan. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944, which President Roosevelt signed on December 20, advanced the concept of a national network of express highways. On April 20, 1949, MacDonald and Fairbank's vision of expressways as the centerpiece of urban revitalization came to an end, as President Harry S. Truman discarded their plan and enacted the 1949 Housing Act. On June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the legislation that launched the Interstate Highway Program. MacDonald and Fairbank's successors guided the greatest public works project in history. The interstate system became so popular in urban areas that its critics turned to thoughts of disincentives as the only way to try to dislodge commuters from overcrowded interstates and to encourage mass transit. However, the interstate system did not reverse the urban problems that had inspired MacDonald and Fairbank to create it.

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