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The definition of what constitutes a city changes from time to time and place to place, but it is most usual to explain the term as a matter of demographics. The United Nations has recommended that countries regard all places with more than 20, 000 inhabitants living close together as urban; but, in fact, nations compile their statistics on the basis of many different standards. The United States, for instance, uses urban place to mean any locality where more than 2, 500 people live. Whatever the numerical definition, it is clear that the course of human history has been marked by a process of accelerated urbanization. It was not until the Neolithic period, roughly 10, 000 years ago, that humans were able to form permanent settlements. Even 5, 000 years ago the only such settlements on the globe were small, semipermanent villages of peasant farmers, towns whose size was limited by the fact that they had to move whenever the soil nearby was exhausted.
It was not until the time of classical antiquity that cities of more than 100, 000 existed, and even these did not become common until the sustained population explosion of the last three centuries. In 1800 less than 3 percent of the world's population was living in cities of 20, 000 or more; this had increased to about 25 percent by the mid- 1960 s and to about 40 percent by 1980. They dynamics of development of urban architecture were yet even more enlightening. Beginning with private houses by Hood, Lescaze, Edward Stone, Neutral, Gropius, and Breuer during the 1930 s, American Modernism gradually supplanted the historical styles in a range of building types, including schools and churches; for example, Eliel Saarinen's simple, brick Christ Lutheran Church (194950) at Minneapolis, Minn. After World War II, big industry turned to Modern architects for distinctive emblems of prestige.
The Connecticut General Life Insurance Company hired one of the largest modern firms, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, to design their new decentralized headquarters outside Hartford, Conn. (195557). Lever Brothers turned to the same firm for New York City's Lever House (1952), in which the park like plaza, glass-curtain walls, and thin aluminum mullions realized the dreams of Mies and others in the 1920 s of freestanding crystalline shafts. Designed by Eliel Saarinen's son Every, the General Motors Technical Center (194856) at Warren, Mich. , was compared with Versailles in its extent, grandeur, and rigorous conformity to an austere, geometric aesthetic of Mission forms. (Jacobs 104) The Harrison and Abramovitz's tower for the Aluminum Company of America at Pittsburgh (1954) advertised its own product, as did Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill's Inland Steel Building at Chicago (195557). Perhaps the most chaste of all was the Seagram Building (195458) at New York City, designed by Mies and Philip Johnson.
Wright alone avoided the rectilinear geometry of these office buildings. In 1955 he saw his Price Tower rise at Bartlesville, Okla. , a richly faceted, concrete and copper fulfillment of the St. Mark's Tower he had designed more than 25 years earlier.
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Research essay sample on 000 Years Ago York City
