Can Design Be Devious? he story of the Robert Moses bridges over the Long Island parkways, and other explorations of unexpected political consequences of design

This publication explores the controversial story of the planning and politics of a series of overpasses spanning the parkways of Long Island. These bridges were commissioned in the 1920s and 1930s by Robert Moses, and the story suggests that they were designed to prevent the passage of buses, thereby allowing only people who could afford to own a car to access Long Island’s leisure spaces. Moses’s possible devious intent and the transformation of the story in subsequent decades shaped a scholarly debate. The publication was produced to accompany the film Misleading Innocence (tracing what a bridge can do), which was developed by Francesco Garutti during his residency at the CCA as Emerging Curator 2013–2014. It presents objects and documents that Garutti encountered during his research, both deepening the analysis and widening the scope beyond the case of the bridges.