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00:00There's nothing like discovering America's great cities from above, to get a bird's eye
00:08view of their awe-inspiring heights, their dazzling public spaces, and the systems that
00:14keep them running day and night.
00:18Many of America's cities were built on the hopes and dreams of early colonists, but each
00:24one has taken its own unique journey to become an American metropolis.
00:31A rivalry between two architects once gave New York City the highest skyline in the world.
00:38Casinos, vice, and spectacles of light turned a desert valley in Nevada into Las Vegas,
00:47and savvy developers transformed a tiny barrier island in Florida into Miami Beach.
00:56Along the way, the people of America's cities have had to endure unimaginable tragedy.
01:02For San Franciscans, it was massive earthquakes.
01:06For the people of Chicago, it was a devastating fire.
01:10And for New Yorkers, it was the terrorist attacks of 9-11.
01:16But each time, they have come back stronger than ever before.
01:22No city in America would be what it is today without the hard work of people willing to
01:28take daring risks.
01:29There are those who blast out tunnels deep underground, engineers who have to climb to
01:36the top of the nation's most iconic spires, and the teams who work through the night to
01:42make sure ships, planes, and trains are ready to go at dawn.
01:49These are the stories of America's great cities.
02:12When you soar across America's cities and look closely down at the towering structures
02:36below, chances are you'll spot some of the most daring workers in America.
02:42The jobs they do make life in our cities possible, day and night.
02:48Just outside San Francisco, linemen are getting a lift by helicopter.
02:54They spend their days stringing cable on new towers that keep the Bay Area running.
03:03In Las Vegas, this engineer starts his day balancing on top of the stratosphere, almost
03:08900 feet off the ground.
03:10He's making sure the thrill ride at the top is safe and ready to terrify tourists with
03:15its spins and tilts high over the Las Vegas Strip.
03:22In New York City, a legendary team of workers called the Sandhogs is starting their daily
03:28descent.
03:29They'll spend their day 13 stories underground, drilling through solid bedrock to create new
03:35rail tunnels under the East River.
03:38Dozens of their members have died or been injured in tunnel collapses, explosions and
03:43crane accidents.
03:46Over the years, the Sandhogs have carved out a vast tunnel system for trains, water and
03:52waste that have all helped turn New York into one giant metropolis.
04:02Each of the work that keeps America's cities running is out of sight.
04:08High above New York City streets, John Schaffner is just starting his shift, along with fellow
04:14engineer David Brown.
04:19They operate two of the tallest cranes in Manhattan.
04:23Every morning, they disappear into the sky, step by step.
04:29By the time they reach the Crow's Nest, they're more than 1,000 feet above the ground.
04:34Today, John and Dave will spend their shifts lifting giant steel beams and other construction
04:41materials up to the top of three World Trade Center.
04:45Their work helps keep New Yorkers below safe as this skyscraper rises high above them.
04:57Lifting a crane on top of a skyscraper in Manhattan is not a job for the faint-hearted.
05:04But just imagine being lashed to a spire 1,700 feet off the ground.
05:10These men are electrical engineers working on the top of one World Trade Center, the
05:15tallest building in Manhattan.
05:18It's also known as the Freedom Tower.
05:21The white panels they're installing are turning this spire into the highest television broadcast
05:25antenna in the nation.
05:29Even if we can't see it from the ground, there's always work being done on the tops of America's
05:33tallest structures.
05:36And that work is especially important in Seattle, since float planes pass right across the city
05:44when they come in to land on Lake Union.
05:50That's what keeps engineer Valerie Palanchuk busy.
05:54Today, he's on his way up to change the bulb in an aviation beacon 40 feet above the top
06:02of Seattle's Space Needle.
06:08Once he gets there, it takes just a few minutes to swap out the old bulb for a new one.
06:16One slip could send him dangling from his safety wire 605 feet over Seattle.
06:28Today it's mission accomplished without a hitch.
06:32Now no matter what the weather, pilots who come in for a landing on Lake Union will still
06:37have the Space Needle clearly in their sights.
06:46But there may be no place in America with high-rise work as challenging as Las Vegas.
06:54This city gets a constant pounding by dust that blows in from across the Nevada desert.
07:00Every day, Ulysses Cervantes and Miguel Lopez have to do the impossible, keep the more than
07:06one million square feet of glass on the roof of the Luxor Hotel and Casino dust-free.
07:13The only way to clean this Las Vegas version of an Egyptian pyramid is to scrub and squeegee
07:19the entire surface by hand, even in blazing summer heat.
07:25It's the kind of hard work that the builders of Egypt's ancient pyramids would probably
07:30have had a lot of respect for.
07:33As soon as Ulysses and Miguel are done, they have to start all over again from the top.
07:42Since most casinos in the Las Vegas Valley are sheathed with glass, it takes a lot of
07:47window washers to keep them all clean.
07:50They have to coordinate carefully with casino management to make sure guests inside don't
07:55get surprised.
07:58The men on this team aren't just colleagues, they're friends and climbing buddies.
08:04When the workday is done, they often head out to nearby Red Rock Canyon National Conservation
08:08Area to climb its giant boulders and steep faces of weathered red sandstone.
08:16In a state as rugged as Nevada, it's probably not surprising that casinos in Vegas get their
08:22windows scrubbed clean by teams of talented rock climbers.
08:31But in Chicago, the city's tallest skyscraper gets its regular bath without a window washer
08:37in sight.
08:39When the enormous black forms of the Sears Tower, now known as the Willis Tower, were
08:44completed in 1973, it was the tallest building in the world, with a roofline that topped
08:50out at 1,450 feet.
08:54But covering its facade were 16,100 windows.
09:00That's a lot of glass to be squeegeed by hand, and the engineers knew it.
09:05So they made plans for an elite squad of window-cleaning robots that could be deployed from the tower's
09:12various rooftops.
09:14Every couple of weeks, each robot moves out from its rooftop garage and glides to the
09:19edge of the tower.
09:21Then, it deploys down the facade to clean every inch of glass with brushes, water, and
09:29mechanical squeegees.
09:33This is how the Willis Tower gets a regular bath, without a single human window washer
09:37dangling dangerously over the windy city.
09:46When you look out past the skyscrapers of just about every American metropolis, there's
09:50almost always a body of water.
09:54Every American city has its own unique story, and water has played a leading role in many
10:00of them, right from the days of their founding.
10:03When the Puritans arrived on the Massachusetts coast and founded Boston in 1630, they chose
10:09a small peninsula, protected on one side by a natural harbor, and the Charles River on
10:15the other.
10:17Boston went on to be a major port and shipbuilding center, and a hub for lumber, rum, codfish,
10:24and the tea that helped spark the American Revolution.
10:32When President George Washington was given the task of choosing a site for the nation's
10:36new capital in 1790, he picked land next to the busy port of Georgetown, near the confluence
10:42of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.
10:47Chicago was established on the shores of Lake Michigan as a trading post, with easy access
10:52to other great lakes and rivers that led into the interior.
10:58Seattle grew up on the shores of a bay, where newly cut timber could be hauled down from
11:03the hills above, and loaded directly on ships that carried it to San Francisco.
11:10San Francisco itself went from being a small Spanish colony to a boomtown during the California
11:15Gold Rush, starting in 1848, thanks to its location on a protected harbor where hundreds
11:21of ships arrived packed with hopeful prospectors.
11:28But no city has benefited more from its navigable waterways than New York.
11:34It's 5 a.m., and the RMS Queen Mary II is just arriving in New York Harbor, after a
11:40transatlantic crossing.
11:43She's on her way to Pier 12, in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
11:48Between the 1890s and the 1950s, close to 12 million immigrants arrived by ship in these
11:53very same waters.
11:55They eagerly awaited the sight of the Statue of Liberty, to know that they had finally
11:59arrived in America.
12:01Once these docks were the heart of New York City's economy, and packed day and night with
12:06longshoremen who raced to unload arriving freighters, often by hand.
12:11It was here where the legendary gangster Al Capone got his start as a petty criminal,
12:16before going on to be a crime boss in Chicago.
12:21But Brooklyn started to lose its preeminence as the world's largest cargo hub, starting
12:25in the late 1950s, thanks to one man's invention, just across New York Harbor in New Jersey.
12:34One day in 1955, Malcolm McLean, the owner of an East Coast trucking company, had a brilliant
12:40idea.
12:41At the time, most freighter cargo was loaded piece by piece into ships' hulls.
12:46McLean imagined how fast and lucrative it would be if he could drop the entire trailers
12:51from his trucks directly onto ships by crane, with the cargo still inside.
12:57His invention was the steel shipping container.
13:01In 1956, McLean bought and retrofitted an old freighter, and then launched the world's
13:07first container ship, from this New Jersey dock, for its maiden voyage to Houston.
13:13It wasn't long before cargo was crisscrossing the world in these now very familiar looking
13:18standardized steel boxes.
13:21As more and more facilities for increasingly larger container ships were constructed in
13:26New Jersey, New York City's once lively docks became quiet.
13:34One hundred thirty million containers are now shipped by sea every year, and more than
13:39fifty one million of them pass through U.S. ports.
13:45And today, ports in cities across the country are on the verge of another revolution.
13:51It's being tested here, in Long Beach, California.
13:55This is America's second busiest container seaport.
13:58It lies inside the most populated county in the nation, Los Angeles.
14:03Close to eight million shipping containers pass through the port of Long Beach every
14:07year.
14:08But at one dock here, there are almost no humans in sight.
14:14Shippers track and organize every one of these shipping containers, from the moment it gets
14:18offloaded from a truck or train.
14:21Robotic lifters pluck each one from the stack, and place it on a driverless shuttle that
14:26delivers it directly to the ship, exactly at the time it needs to be loaded.
14:31The only longshoremen here are the ones in the cranes, who actually lift the container
14:36onto the ship.
14:38But soon, that job will also be done by a robot.
14:42Shipping ports will soon force thousands of dock workers across the U.S. to find new
14:46jobs, and revolutionize how cargo moves around the world.
14:56But there's still one step that will always require a person at the controls, guiding
15:02these colossal ships safely from the ocean up to the dock.
15:09In Miami, it's done by local ship pilots.
15:13Today, pilot John Nitkin is on his way out to meet the colossal Maersk-Sinai.
15:22Stretching almost 1,100 feet long, this mega-ship can carry up to 7,500 20-foot containers.
15:30Each container can hold hundreds of thousands of dollars of cargo.
15:35On a similar-sized ship, called the MOL Comfort, broke in half and sank in 2013 in the waters
15:40off Yemen.
15:41The losses ran over $400 million.
15:51It's why John has to guide this ship very carefully into port.
16:03Miami's shipping lane doesn't make it easy for vessels this big.
16:07Compared to other major ports, it's extremely narrow.
16:11One mistake, and this ship could quickly run aground and shut down all cargo and cruise
16:16ship traffic into and out of the port of Miami.
16:21But John has been piloting ships through this channel for more than 20 years.
16:31He lands the Sinai gently at its dock, safe and sound.
16:39Recent innovations like the shipping container and cutting-edge technology at major ports
16:43have turned cities into enormous hubs for international trade.
16:51But from the days they were founded, America's cities have always been laboratories for the
16:56testing of big ideas.
17:00By the 1890s, Boston had a problem.
17:05Its population was booming, but its narrow colonial streets were clogged with horse-drawn
17:10carts and trolleys.
17:13That's what led the city to carve out and build the first working subway system in America,
17:18which it completed in 1897.
17:23And Boston wasn't the only city rescued by a major work of engineering.
17:28One of the biggest and strangest projects took place here in Chicago.
17:37In the late 19th century, the water of the Chicago River was full of waste and industrial
17:43chemicals that flowed out into Lake Michigan and then polluted the city's fresh water supply.
17:50Chicago residents often suffered from outbreaks of cholera and other diseases.
17:55The fix that engineers came up with was a big one.
18:00To provide clean drinking water, they proposed reversing the flow of the Chicago River as
18:06it passed through the city.
18:12To do it, they built a 28-mile canal, which would draw clean water out of the lake, send
18:19it through the city, and then south toward the Mississippi River.
18:24That way, the polluted water in the river wouldn't enter Lake Michigan.
18:28It was one of the largest engineering and excavation projects in the nation's history
18:33and took eight years to complete.
18:37The Chicago River still flows in reverse through downtown Chicago today.
18:48The challenge of finding solutions to the growing needs of America's cities also led
18:54to the creation of many of our nation's most beloved landmarks.
18:58By the end of the 19th century, ferries still carried people between San Francisco and towns
19:05and cities to the north.
19:08Spanning the opening to San Francisco Bay with a bridge seemed to many like an impossible
19:13engineering challenge.
19:15Critics were fearful it would hurt business, since this waterway was also a shipping channel.
19:21And some were worried it might collapse during a major quake.
19:26When the Golden Gate Bridge was completed in April 1937, its main span stretched 4,200
19:32feet, making it the longest suspension bridge in the world.
19:37It held that title until 1964, when New York City built an even longer suspension bridge,
19:43called the Verrazano Narrows, between Brooklyn and Staten Island.
19:50Almost every major city in America has its own story of an engineering marvel that was
19:56key to its survival.
19:59Los Angeles may never have become the most populated county in America if it hadn't bought
20:04up vast stretches of land in a water-filled valley to the north, and then built a 338-mile-long
20:12aqueduct to get that water down to L.A.
20:18Phoenix relies on its own complex system of canals and pipes to get the water it needs
20:23from the Colorado River.
20:27And New Orleans' survival depends on a series of giant floodgates to keep out hurricane
20:33surge.
20:37Some cities have had to create new land.
20:40When the Puritans founded Boston in 1630, its footprint was tiny.
20:47Starting in the 1800s, the city embarked on enormous land-building projects, chopped off
20:53its original hills, and used that earth to expand Boston's boundaries into what they
20:58are today.
21:01Even Boston-Logan International Airport is built almost entirely on landfill.
21:11But as engineers figured out how to move and secure colossal amounts of earth and rubble
21:16to expand their cities outward, others were busy designing new kinds of structures that
21:22would allow cities to grow vertically into the sky.
21:27Some of those early engineering marvels have almost been forgotten today.
21:32One of them can be found in Seattle.
21:36After Lyman Cornelius Smith had made a fortune selling guns and typewriters, he commissioned
21:41a new office tower here over Pioneer Square in 1909.
21:46For more than half a century, his 38-story Smith Tower was the tallest building on the
21:51West Coast.
21:53Its distinctive pyramid-shaped roof was a landmark for those arriving in Seattle by
21:58both land and sea.
22:02But today, few people picture Smith Tower when they think of Seattle.
22:07Most think of the Space Needle, which was built for the 1962 World's Fair.
22:12It was carefully engineered to steal the limelight from Smith Tower as the tallest
22:17building west of the Mississippi.
22:21But there has never been a skyscraper race in America like the one that happened in New
22:25York and changed the skyline of Manhattan forever.
22:34In the late 1920s, two architects received commissions to design new skyscrapers in New
22:40York City.
22:42The two men had once been partners, but now they were arch-rivals and each wanted his
22:47building to be the highest in the world.
22:5140 Wall Street, with its distinctive copper dome, was completed in 1930.
22:57Its architect, H. Craig Severance, was confident that his building would hold the title as
23:02the world's tallest.
23:05And it did, but only for a few weeks.
23:12At the time, Severance's former partner, architect William Van Allen, was putting the
23:17finishing touches on the Chrysler Building, here at the corner of Lexington Avenue and
23:2142nd Street.
23:24With stainless steel cladding covering its crown and streamlined Art Deco motifs, it
23:29was designed to celebrate the great age of the automobile and the meteoric rise of Chrysler.
23:36To make sure the Chrysler Building would be the tallest in the world, Van Allen developed
23:40a secret plan.
23:43Inside the upper floors of the building, he quietly constructed a 185-foot high steel
23:49spire that would make the Chrysler Building taller than 40 Wall Street.
23:54On October 23, 1929, a small team of construction workers slowly raised it out of the building
24:02for the world to see.
24:04They bolted it into place and capped out the Chrysler Building at 1,046 feet, 120 feet
24:11higher than 40 Wall Street.
24:18Van Allen had succeeded in stealing his former partner's prize.
24:23But the very next year, he found himself in second place.
24:29When the Empire State Building was completed on May 1, 1931, it soared even higher, rising
24:361,250 feet.
24:40It remained the tallest building in the world for four decades until 1971, when the Twin
24:46Towers of the World Trade Center were finally completed in Lower Manhattan.
24:53Now, after 9-11, one World Trade Center stands on the site of the former Twin Towers and
25:00holds the prize as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.
25:11But that hasn't put an end to New York City's skyscraper race.
25:15Today, developers are competing to engineer some of the world's highest residential towers
25:20that will appeal to the wealthiest buyers on Earth.
25:26This was the first of New York's new stiletto-thin residential skyscrapers.
25:31It's called 432 Park Avenue and lies on what's now referred to as Billionaire's Row.
25:38Some of these apartments have sold for more than $30 million.
25:43To make sure buyers won't get woozy when 432 Park Avenue sways in the wind, engineers have
25:49armed it with high-tech shock absorbers.
25:53Three of the upper floors don't have any apartments.
25:56When you glide by their windows and peer inside, you can see the long tubes of what are called
26:01tuned mass dampers.
26:03They weigh 1,300 tons and are used to counteract the force of the wind and keep the tower steady
26:09when it blows hard outside.
26:12High-end luxury towers like this one have taken the lifestyles of the 1% to new heights
26:17in New York City.
26:24Every city's unique history, style, and even personality are often reflected in its tallest
26:29buildings.
26:32When a developer named Ray Hunt built a new hotel here in Dallas in 1978, he decided to
26:38put its revolving restaurant on top of a separate tower instead of on the roof of the hotel
26:43itself.
26:47He named it Reunion Tower to honor some of Dallas' earliest settlers who lived in a community
26:52called La Reunion.
26:55Today, no structure says Dallas, Texas, like this one.
27:00The New York Times has claimed that it's as much a Dallas icon as the Gateway Arch is
27:05for St. Louis.
27:12Not every city has wanted a skyline filled with skyscrapers.
27:17It wasn't so long ago that residents in San Francisco fought hard to try to keep their
27:22beloved city skyscraper-free.
27:28For many who grew up here, the 210-foot-high Coit Tower, which has been perched on Telegraph
27:33Hill since 1933, was the perfect symbol of San Francisco's history and spirit.
27:42It was paid for by Lily Hitchcock Coit, who wanted to leave a gift that would enhance
27:46San Francisco's beauty and honor its firefighters.
27:56But in the 1960s, the Transamerica Corporation revealed plans for a new, more than 1,000-foot-high
28:02tall skyscraper downtown that would radically change San Francisco's skyline.
28:10An ugly fight ensued.
28:12San Franciscans protested, arguing that their city would soon be buried under what they
28:17called a skyline of tombstones.
28:23In the end, they lost their fight, though Transamerica did agree to reduce the height
28:27of its new headquarters by almost 200 feet.
28:33For more than four decades, it was the tallest building in San Francisco.
28:37But over time, its height and pyramid shape made it a San Francisco icon.
28:49San Franciscans may have fought against skyscrapers, but now their city is packed with them.
28:55And today, the colossal new 61-story home of the tech giant Salesforce dominates the
29:01Bay Area.
29:03Rising 1,070 feet, it dwarfs every other structure around it.
29:09Residents of the Bay Area either love it or hate it.
29:15It's one of the most visible symbols of how Silicon Valley and tech wealth have changed
29:20San Francisco, along with rising housing prices and endless traffic on Bay Area highways and
29:26bridges.
29:33If every major city in America could write its own biography, they would all be filled
29:38with fascinating stories of their inspiring rise from humble origins, great booms and
29:47busts, and of hopes and dreams that have led to the creation of some of the most spectacular
29:56urban spaces in the world.
30:03But the most gripping chapters in some of these tales would be of the devastating tragedies
30:08that have struck many American cities, often without warning.
30:15Raging hurricanes and deadly floods have long been two of the biggest dangers to the residents
30:20of cities along the eastern seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico.
30:28When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast in August 2005,
30:33it left millions of people homeless and 1,800 dead.
30:39Eighty percent of New Orleans was ravaged by floodwaters.
30:49But the biggest danger for West Coast cities are massive forces deep underground.
30:56When Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, it blanketed the city of Portland, 50 miles
31:02away, with ash.
31:05Seattle lies just northwest of Mount Rainier, one of the most dangerous volcanoes on Earth.
31:14Las Vegas coastal cities face a different threat, a 750-mile-long earthquake fault called
31:20the San Andreas.
31:27It lies on the Ring of Fire, a long line of earthquake zones and volcanoes that passes
31:32under the West Coast of the United States.
31:36Geologists have warned that Los Angeles could be overdue for a major quake that could be
31:42as powerful as magnitude eight.
31:46When you follow this fault line north, it passes just west of Silicon Valley and the
31:51city of San Francisco.
31:55At exactly 5.12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, the San Andreas unleashed a massive 7.9-magnitude
32:04earthquake here.
32:06The ground shook for less than a minute, but the effects were catastrophic.
32:11Over 500 city blocks were damaged or destroyed.
32:16Fires broke out, and 3,000 people died.
32:19By the time the aftershocks had subsided, 80 percent of San Francisco had been leveled.
32:27The 1906 earthquake remains one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.
32:34The San Andreas struck the Bay Area again in 1989.
32:39The 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta quake left 63 people dead.
32:45Forty-two of them died when an elevated freeway collapsed in Oakland.
32:50A young motorist also perished after a 50-foot section of the former span of the Oakland
32:55Bay Bridge crashed down on the roadway below.
33:04Just like in 1906, Bay Area residents rallied and rebuilt their houses, bridges, and highways.
33:13When you soar over San Francisco's colorful streets and gleaming towers today, you'd
33:18never know that this California city once lay in ruins.
33:24It's a comeback story that's played out in city after city in America, and no place more
33:29dramatically than in Chicago.
33:34On the night of October 8, 1892, a small spark lit a barn on fire at what is now 137 DeKoven
33:42Street.
33:43The fire quickly spread to nearby structures.
33:46High winds fanned the flames and pushed the fires north and east toward Lake Michigan.
33:52For almost four days, the city of Chicago burned until rain showers finally put the
33:59last of the fires out.
34:05The devastation was catastrophic.
34:0817,000 Chicago buildings destroyed, 90,000 residents left homeless, and almost 300 dead.
34:20But even as their city smoldered, the people of Chicago were already vowing to rebuild.
34:27Their city's great fire ended up being a spark that led to innovations in engineering
34:32and design that created one of the most dazzling skylines in the world.
34:41In the aftermath of the fire, Chicago developers raced to secure lots for new buildings, and
34:46land prices skyrocketed.
34:48To maximize the land, they set out to build the highest structures they could.
34:53A new material called structural steel would make that possible in exciting ways the world
34:59had never seen before.
35:06Using steel posts and beams instead of heavy walls of stone, engineers in Chicago could
35:11design new kinds of buildings that could be taller than ever before and sheathed in glass.
35:18It led to a revolution in skyscraper design.
35:22Many of those early steel-framed buildings are still standing in downtown Chicago, and
35:27soaring above them are skyscrapers that have taken structural steel to whole new levels.
35:38The design of the John Hancock Center was revolutionary.
35:42The enormous black diamond shapes on its exterior walls aren't just for looks.
35:48They've been welded together to create a 100-story-high tapered steel tube which holds
35:53the building up.
35:55Since the structure is on the outside, it's called an exoskeleton.
36:01Chicago may never have become a city of engineering marvels if it weren't for the Great Chicago
36:06Fire.
36:12But no urban tragedy in recent memory was as devastating as what happened on 9-11-2001
36:19when terrorists brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.
36:26Five years later, in 2006, construction crews began to prepare the site of Ground Zero for
36:31a new skyscraper called One World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower.
36:38Today, with its angled glass facade and soaring spire, the Freedom Tower rises a symbolic
36:441,776 feet over the site of Ground Zero.
36:50President Barack Obama came to New York while the Freedom Tower was being built and left
36:54behind an inscription on one of the new structure's beams.
36:58We remember, we rebuild, we come back stronger.
37:06And that speaks to the people of every American city who have always responded to tragedy
37:10with resilience, strength, and an eye on the future.
37:19But they've also honored those who suffered and perished with stunning works of engineering
37:24and design.
37:30On April 15, 2013, two Islamic terrorists detonated their bombs at the finish line of
37:36the Boston Marathon, here on Boylston Street.
37:41The explosions killed three people and injured 250 others.
37:46Three days later, the men ambushed and murdered a security officer on the campus of MIT.
37:53In 2015, MIT unveiled this memorial to their slain officer, Sean Collier.
38:00It was designed by architecture professor J. Meejin Yoon.
38:05It's made up of 32 massive interlocking pieces of granite that symbolize the strength and
38:10unity that brought members of this community together after the bombings and Collier's
38:16death.
38:20When night falls on New York City, the site of the former Twin Towers glows with light.
38:29This is the National September 11 Memorial.
38:33It was designed as two large reflecting pools that have been placed inside the former footprints
38:39of the Twin Towers.
38:43New York City decided to preserve these two sites as a way for New Yorkers to remember
38:48the nearly 3,000 people who perished in the 1993 and 2001 terrorist attacks on the World
38:54Trade Center.
38:57It also honors the first responders and others who lost their lives in the aftermath.
39:09After dark, every city paints its own unique story with light.
39:15There may be no two cities that do it with bigger spectacles than Miami and Las Vegas.
39:32One of the best ways to understand the outsized role that cities play in the life of America
39:37is to peer down on the United States like an astronaut from space.
39:45Today, more than 80% of Americans live in urban areas that light up North America in
39:51great pools of light.
39:54From the glow of Times Square in New York City, to the marquees of casinos along the
40:01Las Vegas Strip, to the streets of Chicago that fan out from the shores of Lake Michigan,
40:09to Houston, with highways that look like giant spokes of a wheel at night, and to
40:16the many cities that surround San Francisco Bay.
40:23These vast urban centers may look just like tapestries of light from space, but when you
40:30get up close, they offer a chance to discover the myriad ways that people in these very
40:34different cities work and play.
40:40As the moon rises over the Santa Monica Hills, colorful veins appear across Los Angeles as
40:46thousands of commuters hit the road on LA County's 515 miles of freeway.
40:54Tonight, most of these drivers are heading home, but some are on their way downtown to
41:02watch the Lakers take on the Houston Rockets here at their home court at the Staples Center.
41:09Night brings out sports addicts in cities all across the country, and not just fans
41:17of professional teams.
41:19Here in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, a Friday night ritual is underway.
41:28Fans are cheering on two of their favorite high school teams, the Saxxy Mustangs and
41:33the Rowlett Eagles, in a stadium that's almost big enough to be pro.
41:37If the Mustangs win tonight, they'll take home their third championship in a row.
41:52There's plenty of land in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex to build stadiums and high
41:56school football fields, but that's not the case here in Miami.
42:02Every night, soccer players come to a parking garage at 444 Brickle Avenue downtown to play
42:08on fields built on a rooftop.
42:12In South American cities like Lima and Rio de Janeiro, it's common to find soccer fields
42:17on the roofs of buildings, since there's very little space left on the ground.
42:24These fields have been owned by Pavel Pardo, a former player for Mexico's national soccer
42:28team.
42:29The pickup games here last right up until 2 a.m., when the lights go off and the players
42:34finally go home.
42:42But for many in Miami, that's the time when their night is just getting started, especially
42:48here along Ocean Drive in Miami Beach.
42:54It's been an all-night party town since this city was founded in 1915.
42:59That's when developers transformed Miami Beach from a narrow, mosquito-plague barrier island
43:05into a destination with luxury clubs and hotels.
43:09To lure wealthy vacationers from northern states like New York, they built 800 art deco
43:15style buildings, many of which are still standing.
43:20One of them is the Colony Hotel at 736 Ocean Drive, which was completed in 1935.
43:28Hotels like this one helped turn Miami Beach into a boomtown in the 1930s.
43:33Today, Ocean Drive is still a big draw for club goers who fill its rooftop bars and try
43:39and get past the ropes at popular nightclubs like Live, inside the legendary Fontainebleau
43:44Hotel.
43:47But the city of Miami itself, located just across Biscayne Bay, also knows how to put
43:55on a party.
43:57It's the host of the annual Ultra Music Festival.
44:02Every year, it turns South Florida's largest city into a giant spectacle, with huge explosions
44:07of sound and light.
44:16But there may be no metropolis in the nation with nighttime entertainment as captivating
44:21as Las Vegas.
44:29The Vegas Strip is familiar to many as a feast of color and light.
44:37One of its biggest spectacles is a choreographed dance of water.
44:48These are the fountains of the Bellagio.
44:52Under the surface of this eight-acre man-made lake are 1,200 water jets.
44:58Some of them, called super shooters, can send water 240 feet into the sky.
45:07Vegas may be the entertainment capital of the nation, but when the fountains of the
45:11Bellagio start their carefully choreographed dance, all eyes along the Strip peer up in
45:18awe at what may be Vegas' most popular performers of all.
45:31But one spectacle few people here ever see is that of the hundreds of winged nocturnal
45:36predators that swarm in the skies over the Strip at night in search of prey.
45:43Reaching out of the top of the Luxor Hotel and Casino is a very powerful ray of light
45:48called the Sky Beam.
45:52It was created with 39 7,000-watt bulbs and has been called the brightest beam of light
45:57in the world.
45:58It's so powerful, the air over the Luxor can reach 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
46:06This shaft of light draws thousands of insects, and those insects make the Sky Beam the perfect
46:12feeding ground for bats.
46:15Look closely, and chances are you'll see hundreds of these predators swarming as they feast
46:20in the night sky.
46:24This may be the strangest spectacle of all in Las Vegas.
46:36It's just after sunset in Seattle, and at the base of the Space Needle, a series of
46:41strange glass forms have just come alive with light.
46:47These brilliant plant-like shapes are the work of glass artist Dale Chihuly, a native
46:52of the nearby city of Tacoma.
46:55People come here after dark to experience this quiet garden of glass, which was created
47:00in 2012 on the site of a former amusement park.
47:07Chihuly, who trained in Europe, pioneered new ways of producing glass so he could create
47:15delicate natural forms of animals and plants.
47:22This garden is now one of the city's most visited sites.
47:29Across the country, outside of Boston, students are gathering in a circle of light in a Harvard
47:35garden.
47:40This is a temporary installation by artist Teresita Fernandez.
47:46She made it with thousands of flexible rods that move and make sound in the wind.
47:53Fernandez named her work Autumn, Nothing Personal, after an essay by African American writer
47:58James Baldwin.
48:00She wants it to get students here thinking and talking about how human history and the
48:04world itself are in a constant state of change.
48:15There's really no end to what you can discover when you peer down on life in America's cities
48:21after dark.
48:25That's especially true in Los Angeles, for those who come here for a drink at the highest
48:30outdoor bar in the Western Hemisphere.
48:34It's called Spire 73 because it lies on the 73rd floor of the Wilshire Grand, the tallest
48:40building west of the Mississippi.
48:45This skyscraper, which was completed in 2017, was designed to celebrate California's landscape.
48:51The glass crown was shaped after a rock formation in Yosemite National Park called Half Dome.
48:57While its reflective facade is said to have been inspired by the glassy surface of California's
49:02Merced River.
49:05But for many people, this building's biggest draw is the view from its rooftop bar.
49:11One thousand feet above the streets of LA, it offers Angelenos a chance to look out across
49:16the dazzling lights of the most populated county in America.
49:21From the Sunset Strip to the Santa Monica Pier.
49:26And if they look down, they can also catch sight of their fellow Californians ice skating
49:31in Pershing Square, right in the middle of this famously hot and dry metropolis.
49:40These are just a few of the millions of lights that make LA County glow from space.
49:52Whether you're looking down on their streets from staggering heights, or racing right across
49:57their waters, America's great cities are full of riveting tales.
50:05One rose from ashes to build the tallest tower in the world.
50:10It was a simple idea in another that triggered a revolution in global trade.
50:16There are inspiring artists whose work dazzles with light.
50:23And workers willing to take daring risks to keep their metropolis moving day and night.
50:31These are the powerful stories of America's great cities.