The Building Blocks for the next decade and beyond are all around us. Im cnns rachel crane. Over the next halfhour well take you around the globe to cities that are preparing for the future using technologies that change how we live and force us to ask the question. Is the city of tomorrow already here . The high cost of energy, crime, choking air pollution. Around the globe these 21st century challenges are being met with real innovation. In england, wind energy from the atlantic is powering homes. Police in los angeles are crunching big data to solve every day crime. And in seattle, one building is redefining what it means to be green. Real solutions. But the challenges only grow bigger. According to the u. N. , the World Population will reach 8. 3 billion by 2030. In the same time, Greenhouse Gases are expected to increase by 25 . The worlds trash nearly doubled. While half the world will live in areas threatened by lack of water. What does that mean for cities . 60 of us will live in one. And by 2050, 70 . And the demand for clean air, water, energy, and yes, convenience, will skyrocket. By 2017, nearly half of the worlds population will be online. And almost half of all internet traffic will travel through smart devices. Imagine, fewer drivers commuting to work, smarter policing, buildings with no carbon foot principle and trash cans that tell us when theyre full. Life in the city of tomorrow could be pretty great if we develop the technology we have today. In los angeles the lapd is using Surveillance Technology with roots in the cia. They have Police Cruisers that scan license plates and a data center that makes sense of it all. It may sound like Science Fiction but it is real and it is helping them solve crimes faster and with less effort. Since the early 1990s, crime rates have steadily declined across the country. One possible explanation . Smarter data driven policing. Here in los angeles, the lapd is embracing new technologies and Big Data Analytics like never before, changing the way we fight crime. Watch commander Sergeant Kennedy showed us how big Data Analysis is changing the force. This is our license plate reader. We have three cameras taxed to the light bar. Lnls plate readers installed on patrol cars have become common place and they automatically scan every license plate that drives by. It goes through the sacramento database to check for california Vehicle Systems to see if it is stolen or if there is a want on it for some reason. Got an alert. A 30,000 warrant on the parked car that we just passed that is right behind us. Over the course of the day the lapd can scan tens of thousands of lnls plates across the city. At the laments realtime analysis and Critical Response division, those license plate scans are fed into a Game Changing mining system. A powerful application that can change the cia as an early investor. It is a federated search system. It combines disparity data sets and allows to us access them very quickly. With a single key stroke you get the effect of a 38person task force. After searching more than 100 million data points, they have the information on one burglary suspect linking him to cell phone numbers, arrest records, known associates and past arrest records. They can even track his past locations based on previous license plates scans. If we are searching for him, we dont have to search all of l. A. County. We know where he frequents. Anybody who is a Vehicle Owner is in palantir . Anybody in a public place and has passed a license plate reader will be in our data set. We cannot just go searching for you and anyone else without a reason because we have a lot of data for people who have done nothing. For those people who have done nothing, the aclu of Southern California believes the lapds license plate readers may be violating civil liberties. A system of license plate readers that is pervasive enough to track the movements of every car in the city. Reasonable detail would effectively six toot for the gps trackers for everybody. The public should be the ones deciding what the proper balance is between their privacy rights and their public safety. The lament believes the public wants palantir on its side. You want to have the effect of 30 detectives working that theft. It is hugely important to make those cases solvable. You may not realize it but youre being waxed. Heres cnn jason carroll. There are literally cameras all around us. You walk outside the door and theres this expectation of privacy even when youre out in public. Thats not the reality. As youre out here taking pictures of Tall Buildings and electronic billboards, you probably dont realize that the picture is being taken of you. There are 6,000 Security Cameras all throughout the city that the new York City Police department has at its disposal. The question is, how much is too much . Thats a good question. Not in my house. If it comes in my home. Just to walk down the street knowing somebody is watching me makes me uneasy. Lets say instead of standing in times square, you were standing in front of big ben in london. They have a Security System called the ring of steel. There are Security Cameras practically everywhere in london. Lets say you were to walk from one end of the city to the other. Chances are you would have been captured by a Security Camera some 300 times. What are they doing with all that information . Theyre looking for crime. Thats the scary part. A lot of it goes to waste. Watching patterns. Terrorism. I dont think they know what theyre doing. Heres the question. That a lot of people i think are asking themselves as we go forward. How much of your personal privacy are you willing to sacrifice in order to be safe . Later on the show, bill nye the science guy predicts the future. California takes salt out of the ocean. And erin burnett visits the worlds tallest building. But first, new york city wants to count every pedestrian in manhattan and it finally has the technology to do just that. Sea captain theres a narratorstorm cominhe storm narrator that whipped through the turbine which poured. Surplus energy into the plant which generously lowered its price and tipped off the house which used all that energy to stay warm through the storm. Chipmunk theres a bad storm comin narrator the internet of everything is changing how energy works. Is your Network Ready . Amam rich. My Social Circle includes captains of industry, former secretaries of state, oil tycoons, and ambassadors of countries known for their fine cheeses. Yes i am rich. Thats why i drink the champagne of beers. Of americas numberone puppy food brand. With dha and essential nutrients also found in mothers milk. Purina puppy chow. Really. 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And ask an Insurance Expert about all our benefits today, like our 24 7 support and service, because at Liberty Mutual insurance, we believe our customers do their best out there in the world, so we do everything we can to be there for them when they need us. Plus, you could save hundreds when you switch, up to 423. Call. Today. Liberty Mutual Insurance responsibility. Whats your policy . 8. 3 Million People live in new york city and millions more visit as tourists every year. What if you could count all that foot traffic and predict where the big crowds will pop up next . Americans spend roughly 37 billion hours a year waiting in lines. At the grocery store, for a hamburger, at their favorite restaurants. Imagine if you didnt have to. That may soon become a reality in new york. Where theyre embracing new Recognition Technology that will count every pedestrian in the city. Every neighborhood in the city walks. We really need to have an understanding of what that activity looks like so we can serve new yorkers better. Over 60 of commuters in new york city travel by foot or public transit. For a city of 8. 4 million, thats a lot of people to count. The department of transportation counts pedestrians around the city. They sent people twice a year and they just sit there with downers. It doesnt give us a view of what it is like day in, day out. Theyre trying to change that by providing a realtime picture of new yorks pedestrian traffic using hundreds of existing video feeds around the city. Computer vision algorithms that make it possible to detect and count people. Using video feeds it counts about 10 Million People a day. They can even count how many people are inside a building. The city is already using the data providing pedestrian counts to Small Business owners in the citys Online Business atlas and there is promising potential for data integration. If it was yelp or google maps, you could find a restaurant that you always wanted to try but it is always packed. Right now is the right time to go. Today the company only covers about 25 of the city. To help count the rest, placemeter is offering to pay residents to stream video from their own windows using an old smart phone. Today we count vehicles and pedestrians. Tomorrow we will start classifying gender, then age. Then well start detecting people with strollers and bags and things like that. With Detection Technology rapidly improving, an obvious concern is whether the systems will be able to track the details of our daily lives. What we do is turn video feeds into date. A video feeds are a little creepy. Somebody looks at them. In our case a computer looks at them. Whatever one case gets through a system, we process it is, turn it into data and delete it. I think theres a lot more we can do if we have better understanding. When we have to schedule trash pickup, how many police to deploy to a particular area. The more information you have, the better you can manage it. Wherever you fall on the issue of surveillance, one thing is clear. Global populations are growing and so is the need for drinkable water. In water starved san diego, theyre betting big on a billiondollar solution. Where the largest and most advanced Desalination Plants in the world. With california experiencing one of the worst droughts in the states history, access to fresh water has never been more important or more difficult. Here in Southern California, the largest Desalination Plant in the western hemisphere is being constructed. It will soon take water from the ocean and create 50 million gallons of fresh water a day. California is in a serious drought right now. Any new Water Supplies are important to the region. We have a 190 billion economy in this region that is dependent on water. The question you need to consider is what is the cost of not having enough water . Unlike, lets say, water that comes from rainfall or water that comes from snow pack, were utilizing what essentially is the Worlds Largest reservoir, the pacific ocean. The carls batted Desalination Plant will cost approximately 1 billion. The fresh water will be pumped 10 miles underground to a regional delivery system. Providing water to an additional 300,000 San Diego County residents. Customers wont know whether theyre drinking desalle natd water or not. Thats right. Thats right. It will become part of the overall supply. Through a process called reverse osmosis, the plan will convert every two gallons of sea water into one gallon of fresh water, filtering out 99. 9 of the salt. The salt or brine thats removed is discharged back into the ocean. The desalination process traditionally takes a lot of energy. A plant this size would normally use as much energy in a single day as 70 homes in a year. Officials at the carlsbad plant says theres will use 46 less energy. The project is not without criticism. Environmentalists point out that desalination requires a lot of energy and that brine discharge can negatively impact marine life. Were creating more marine wet lands in the South San Diego bay to create new habitats so fish can reproduce there. With respect to the brine, we dilute it before it leaves the site. The plant is expected to be complete in 2016. Everybody is extremely excited to see this project coming online and providing with us a new water supply. After the breaker we see how one building collects water in the middle of the desert. Bill nye explains why batteries are critical to the future of cities. And we take a look at londons massive answer to an energy crisis. Were trying our best to be role models. Dels. We dont jump at the sound of the opening bell, because were trying to make the school bell. Corner booth beats Corner Office any day. We make the most of our time. And our money. The 2014 malibu. Highest ranked midsize car in initial quality the car for the richest guys on earth. Hooking up the country whelping business run build were investing big to keep our country in the lead. Load we keep moving to deliver what you need. And that means growth, lots of cargo going all around the globe. Cars and parts, fuel and steel, peas and rice, hey thats nice Norfolk Southern whats your function . Helping this big country move ahead as one Norfolk Southern hows that function . Later, erin burnett visits due buy and we see how a skyscraper collects water in the middle have to desert. First we take a look at how london is harnessing the power of the wind. This is the london array. It is the Worlds Largest offshore wind farm. And this is what it helps power. The farm has 175 giant Wind Turbines capable of generating enough electricity to power half a million homes. And it is quite possibly the answer to lonls growing energy needs. We expect about 900,000 tons that would have been put into the atmosphere. It is about the equivalent of under 300,000 cars a year being taken off the road. Approximately 8. 3 Million People live here. By 2031, that number is expected to climb to 10 million. A growing population that means a growing need for energy. London, one of the most historic cities in the world knows in order to keep one future energy demands, they need to update and diversify their energy portfolio. How do we get to a more cleaner future, a Reliable Energy source . Thats what the london array is about. Moving from that old coal, gas, nuclear, to winds. They are one of the leaders in offshore wind power. There are over 1,000 turbines dotting the waters. These things are massive. Each turbine is larger than the london eye and it takes as little as a 10mileanhour gust to spin these. Until recently, the array was set to expand by possibly 57 more turbines but construction was halted to save a rare breed of bird called the red throated diver. A rare species of bird in the u. K. They come down in the win and feed there. The fear is that the construction in the second phase would displace the birds. Is that a bit of a disappointment that it is not in the near future for you . As an engineer i want to build things. So of course i would like things to go ahead. About you have to be realistic. The futile will present more obstacles than a bird. One thing is certain. More of these means more of this. Thousands of miles from england in the desert of due buy is the tallest building ever built and it may also be one of the smartest. Heres cnns erin burnett. At 2716 feet it is the tallest structure ever built on earth. Towering over the city, it has the highest Observation Deck and the highest restaurant and sky scraper and the owners say it has the highest Swimming Pool in the world. Is there room for Tall Buildings like this that arent just a landmark or something beautiful to look at but actually function and are efficient and profitable. I think there are. I think they are building smarter. And more efficient. He built it at an estimated 1. 5 billion. Its doors opened in 2010. Today it was, i dont know. 110 degrees. How do you keep this cool . Of course it is a combination of good design to start, with good advancement, good electrical system. The skin on the building, the type of glass we are using, the way it reflects heat, all of that is a combination. Technologies and monitoring the building every single hour. Using an innovative ice storage system, the tower is currently kept cool with the equivalent of 13,000 tons of i