Beyond the Motor City is a new PBS documentary directed by acclaimed filmmaker Aaron Woolf (King Corn) and produced as part of BLUEPRINT AMERICA, the precedent-setting, multi-platform initiative—produced by Thirteen/WNET and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation—that shines a spotlight on one of our country’s most critical issues: America’s decaying and neglected infrastructure.

Beyond the Motor City examines how Detroit, a grim symbol of America’s diminishing status in the world, may come to represent the future of transportation and progress in this country. The film explores Detroit’s historic investments in infrastructure—from early 19th-century canals to the urban freeways that gave The Motor City its name and made America’s transportation system the envy of the world. But it also reveals that over the last 30 years, much of the world has left Detroit—and America—behind, choosing faster, cleaner, more modern transportation.

In a journey that takes us into the neighborhoods of Detroit and then beyond to Spain, California, and our nation’s capital, Beyond the Motor City urges us to ask how a symbol of America’s urban decay might transform itself into a model of urban revitalization. Can we finally push America’s transit system into the 21st century?

This May and June, join us in Beyond the Motor City’s BLUEPRINT AMERICA SCREENING TOUR: a community initiative that will provide a public forum for discussion about the future of transportation in America.