David Smiley

David Smiley is the Assistant Director of Columbia GSAPP’s Urban Design program.

Smiley trained as an architect and as an architectural and urban historian. At Columbia, he co-teaches studios which examine urbanization, ecological systems, and social infrastructure, and leads seminars about Modernist urbanism, New Towns, and the dilemmas of public space. He was written about contemporary urban and suburban issues, examining large-scale urban interventions, the single-family house and multi-family housing, the history and re-use of shopping malls and the recent history of urban planning and urban design. In Pedestrian Modern: Architecture and Shopping, 1925-1956 (Minnesota, 2013), Smiley studied the ways American architects interpreted shopping centers as modernist architectural and urban projects rather than, or alongside, their role as sites of consumption. Most recently, Smiley contributed an essay on Broadacre City to the 2017 Museum of Modern Art catalog and exhibit, Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive. Smiley is also the Board Chair of the Center for Urban Pedagogy.