Its rich Levantine residents who acquired the surrounding vineyards typically had Latin backgrounds, as opposed to those who originally came from Britain and who preferred Bornova.

However, Greek inhabitants were expulsed in 1922 and fled to Greece, where they named their new settlement "Neos Voutzas" (meaning "New Buca"), close to Athens.

The core area of Buca could preserve its traditional architectural tissue based on two-storey residences, while apartment blocks mushroomed in its extensions, as it is the case in all localities in Turkey which had to absorb immigration.

Şirinyer area used to be called Kızılçullu, in reference to a legend according to which Tamerlane would have established his headquarters here during his 1402 siege of İzmir ("Kızılçullu" meaning "red horseclothes"), and Buca's Levantine population, who owned orchards and vineyards here, had named the area under the no less assumptive name of Paradiso.

Çevik Bir, the retired Turkish general who was the force commander of during the United Nations' Operation Restore Hope in Somalia and an influential figure in Turkey's politics and diplomacy in the 1990s, is from Buca and a public square is named after him.