The people planned to build a city and tower “to make a name” for themselves and so they would not be scattered Genesis 11:4. God then confuses their language so they cannot understand one another, and the LORD scatters them over the earth Genesis 11:7–9.
Genesis 11:1–4 describes a unified human population using one shared way of speaking, moving east until they settle on a plain in Shinar. There they coordinate a construction project, developing baked bricks and using tar as mortar. This scene follows the table of nations in Genesis 10, which has already portrayed many peoples spreading out by clans, languages, and lands. Genesis 11:1–4 steps back to picture an earlier moment when humanity is still presented as one speech-community, setting up a tension with the diversity described in chapter 10.
Genesis 11:1–4 presents humanity as unusually unified: “the whole earth” shares one language and a common way of speaking. That shared speech enables shared planning. The group travels east, settles on a plain in Shinar, and coordinates a major building effort using fired brick and tar—practical materials for a large settlement on a river plain.
A careful answer keeps the immediate passage, the book's argument, and the whole-Bible storyline together, so the question is answered in context instead of as a detached idea.
Start with Genesis 11:4, then read the surrounding section so the answer stays connected to the passage's flow.
4They said, "Come, let`s build us a city, and a tower, whose top reaches to the sky, and let`s make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth."