INTRODUCTION Human settlements have undergone thousands if not millions of years of evolution, change and conflict. According to Johnson & Earle (2000, p. 54) human foragers began to spread around the world over two million years ago. Maintaining their subsistence by gathering wild berries and hunting animals, this group became the first “affluent society” (Johnson & Earle, 2000, p. 54). One of the main causes of this richness was the low population density and the ratio of wild food to human population. Due to the low population density and reliance on cooperation and ties at the family level, there was very little social and economic stratification in these early times. hunter-gatherer society. This contrasts sharply with modern-day human settlements. Many cities around the world today exhibit high levels of stratification, often with high rates of unemployment or underemployment. Even comparing today's human settlements with those of the last century we can witness the intensification of the distance between those in the upper strata and those in the lower strata. The question then arises: have human settlements made progress over time in human settlements? What is progress? Is it fair to compare human settlements thousands of years apart, given that technology has intensified exponentially over the span of human societies? This paper will attempt to address these issues. Focusing on the growing inequality between social strata around the world, one comes to the conclusion that no progress has been made in human settlements. Using the example of an incomplete skyscraper (named "Tower of David") in Caracas, Venezuela, the effects of globalization and other factors will be examined. Globalization as well as the dominance of the global city network has l...... half of article ......ge.Johnson, A.W., & Earle, T. (2000). The evolution of human societies: from the foraging group to the agrarian state. (2nd ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lowenstein, R. (2011, October 27). Occupy Wall Street: it's not a hippie thing. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/occupy-wall-street-its-not-a-hippie-thing-10272011.htmlRomero, S., & Diaz, M.E. (2011, February 28). A 45-story walkup attracts the desperate. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/world/americas/01venezuela.html?pagewanted=all &_r=0Ross, R., & Trachte, K. (1983). Global cities and global classes: Peripheralization in New York City. In N. Brenner & R. Keil (Eds.), The Global Cities Reader. New York: Routledge.Sassen, S. (1996). Cities and communities in the global economy. In N. Brenner and R. Keil (eds.), The Global Cities Reader. New York: Routledge.