International expositions have long been studied as moments of spectacle, cultural diplomacy, and political performance. Yet less attention has been paid to how expositions have been shaping the cities that hosted them by leaving lasting traces in the urban landscape, sometime successful, sometimes less so, but always impactful. Rather than treating world’s fairs as ephemeral events, this panel examines international expositions as sites where inherited and projected models of urban order have been translated into modern built form and later reactivated, repurposed, and re-signified within new spatial, political, and mnemonic regimes. The three papers included in this panel explore how international exposition’s architecture, monumental design, and urban planning mobilized models of civic authority and urban imagination. Far from being fixed or universally legible, these models have been continually renegotiated as the former fairgrounds have been transformed into parks, civic and business centers, residential districts, or contested heritage sites. Expositions thus functioned as laboratories in which constructed pasts and imagined futures have been used to authorize development, discipline space, and shape collective aspirations.

Lisa Schrenk examines the failed legacies of selected late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century exposition sites, particularly those organized around sustainability themes. By analyzing cases in which utopian rhetoric gave way to underused landscapes and decaying infrastructure, she identifies structural factors behind post-exposition decline while highlighting more recent planning strategies that aim to integrate long-term urban needs into the initial design of the fair. Ketty Iannantuono analyzes the 1940 Mostra d’Oltremare in Naples as a case study of ideological ambition and problematic afterlife. She traces how Fascist-era architectural and symbolic programs shaped visions of modernity and authority, and how the site was later absorbed into the urban fabric of Fuorigrotta. The paper foregrounds debates over preservation and reuse, framing the former exposition grounds as a contested heritage landscape in post-Fascist Italy. Constanza Robles Sepúlveda compares the urban, political, and cultural afterlives of the 1929 and 1992 expositions in Seville by focusing on disparities in site preservation, tourist engagement, and municipal involvement. It argues that these divergent approaches have produced contrasting and, at times conflicting images of Seville as a global metropolis of cultural and historical significance.

Together, the papers demonstrate how exposition sites became enduring arenas of urban transformation, shaped by shifting political priorities, planning regimes, and memory practices. By placing world’s fairs within longer trajectories of urban development, the panel reframes them not as isolated spectacles, but as ongoing historical processes embedded in the material and social life of modern cities. By rigorously limiting the speaking time of our three panelists, chair, and commentator, we anticipate having ample time for robust discussion and audience participation.