This paper examines several historical and political contexts in which connections have been forged between modernity and identity in the field of Baghdad’s twentieth century architecture and urban space. Given that for some Iraqi critics, historians, or professionals, “westernization” is embedded in “modernization” and even to a certain extent in modernity, I’ll attempt to define the ways and the limits within which architecture and urban planning or urban space in Baghdad have been deployed in the different narratives of affirmation of an “Arab” or “Iraqi” identity.