Abstract

The term ‘Third World’ was first used in 1952 by the French economist ­Alfred Sauvy­ in order to stress the division between the liberal ‘First’ world, the communist ‘Second’, and the rest of the non­aligned ‘Third’ world. During the 1970s and 1980s, the confrontation between the East and the West polarized the dissemination of the architecture and planning concepts. The export of ‘Modernism’ and its adaptations to the conditions of ‘Third World’ from Socialist and Capitalist countries introduced the new paradigms of reconstruction and resettlement policies that create new urban identities in these countries. Rendering the importance of the complex relationship between interrelated politics in the geopolitical matrix of world war responses to a series of problematic questions on actual architectural concepts and meta­political strategies that frame social life in an oppressive frame. In cold war politics, urban planning was considered to be a powerful instrument, and that the export of architecture and planning functioned as a political apparatus by non­ government aid organizations, philanthropic foundations, corporations, and individual professionals. Through archival materials including historical documents, drawings, photographs, maps, planning transfers, and reconstruction strategies, this paper aims to show how we can re­conceptualize architecture and urban planning as a political apparatus of transnational transfer during the Post­war reconstruction projects to create a new urban identity.