This month marks the 100th anniversary of two pieces of legislation that revolutionized the way we live. On July 11, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the first Federal Aid Road Bill. Two weeks later, on July 25, 1916, New York City passed the country’s first comprehensive zoning ordinance.

Prior to 1916, transportation infrastructure was primarily a local and/or private responsibility. For example, cities leased their rights-of-way to trolley companies, which operated transit lines. Railroad companies provided travel service between cities.

The 1916 Federal Road Bill was the first step in nationalizing transportation infrastructure funding. State highway departments were formed (South Carolina’s in 1917) to manage federal appropriations for roads.

Government favoritism of automotive infrastructure crowded out other transportation modes and undermined innovation. During the century before 1916, entrepreneurs invented steam ferries, trains, bicycles, trolleys, and automobiles. Such advances ceased after 1916. Yes, today’s cars are more comfortable and powerful, but they have the same steering wheel, four tires, and internal combustion engine as the Model-T Henry Ford was building 100 years ago. As for roads, the main difference is they are bigger.

Unable to compete with government favored automobiles, Charleston’s last private ferry operator closed shop in 1930. Its trolley lines, which carried 20 million passengers a year (compared with CARTA’s 5 million per year) stopped running in 1937.

Zoning is segregation - not only of land uses deemed incompatible, but of people deemed “undesirable.” Progressives behind New York’s 1916 zoning ordinance regarded immigrants moving into northern cities from Europe and the South as “undesirable.”

In 1921, then U.S. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover tapped Edward Bassett, the leading advocate of New York’s 1916 zoning, to create a model zoning ordinance. Engineer Morris Knowles also served on this committee.

In its 1926 landmark decision in Euclid v. Ambler Realty, the Supreme Court validated zoning. Among many divisive pronouncements Justice Sutherland used in writing the 6-3 majority opinion, was one that asserted “the apartment house is a mere parasite.”

Morris Knowles (yes, the one on Hoover’s committee) came to Charleston in 1931 at the invitation of the Society for the Preservation of Old Buildings (now the Preservation Society). Dismissing 250 years of custom and tradition, Knowles advised widening narrow streets and segregating races. Just as the automobile was crowding out other forms of transportation, zoning outlawed growth patterns that enabled one to meet daily needs by walking. Following along, zoning was adopted by Mount Pleasant in 1949 and Charleston County in 1955.