Speculative Geographies of Modernity

Abstract

This article critically reinterprets the socio-spatial discourse of modernity embodied in Izmir Culture Park (ICP; Kültürpark), a modernist public landscape conceived in 1936 as both a cultural park and an international fairground. Built after the Great Fire of Smyrna (1922), the park functioned as an experiment in state-led modernization and Westernization in the newly formed Turkish Republic. Engaging with Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad—conceived, perceived, and lived space—the study examines how the park’s ideological intentions intersected with everyday social practices across historical periods. Drawing on archival plans, municipal documents, oral histories, and hand-drawn graphical representations of memory (HGRMs), it investigates the dynamic interplay between political power, social agency, and urban memory. Framing this tension as “discursive publicness,” this article positions ICP as a conjectural repository of collective modernities and a methodological bridge linking spatial theory, cultural memory, and design historiography. This approach reveals how the park’s spatial configurations and public uses have both reflected and informed broader narratives of modernity in Turkey, making it a unique site for tracing the changing relationships between space, power, and collective memory over time.