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If you wanted to know the 20th century's top songs, movies, novels, people, TV shows, news stories, or any other topic capable of being ranked by superlatives, 1999 was the year for you. Dozens of lists identified the "best," "greatest," "most influential," and "sexiest" activities, events, and people of the century and even the millennium.
Not surprisingly, the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways appeared on lists throughout the year. In March 1999, for example, CONEXPO-CON/AGC included the interstate system among the "Top 10 Construction Achievements of the 20th Century." The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) honored the interstate system as one of the "Top 10 Achievements of the 20th Century." US. News and World Report (Dec. 27, 1999) identified "25 Shapers of the Modern Era," including former Federal Highway Administrator Frank Turner, who was identified as the "The Superhighway Superman."
When Engineering News-Record published its 125th anniversary issue (July 26, 1999), it listed the "125 Top Projects" over the life of the magazine. The interstate system was listed for 1996, its 40th anniversary. The magazine could have been speaking for all the others who selected the interstate system for century honors when it noted that it earned its place on the list "based on sheer size and scale."
Because of its sheer size and scale, the interstate system became controversial as soon as the construction program began after President Eisenhower signed the FederalAid Highway Act of 1956. And its impacts, particularly on our cities, remain controversial. This aspect of the interstate system can be seen in the results of a survey announced in 1999 by the Fannie Mae Foundation, a think tank that produces research, reports, and working papers on affordable housing. Professor Robert Fishman of Rutgers University surveyed leading urban historians, planners, and architects on the most powerful influences on the American metropolis in the past 50 years. With the results listed in order of importance, No. 1 is the 1956 Interstate Highway Act and the dominance of the automobile.
"More than any other single measure, the 1956 act created the decentralized, automobile-dependent metropolis we know today," said Fishman.
The two men who conceived the interstate system in the late 1930s and early 1940s Thomas H. MacDonald, chief of...