David Smiley is an architect and an architectural and urban historian, and is the Assistant Director of Columbia GSAPP's Urban Design program. He co-teaches urban design studios and leads seminars on modernist urban history, New Towns, “Smart Cities,” and on public space. He was written about urban and suburban issues, including urban renewal, the single-family house, multi-family housing, shopping centers and their complex associations with "modernism." In Pedestrian Modern: Architecture and Shopping, 1925-1956 (Minnesota, 2013), Smiley studies 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 served as the Board Chair of CUP, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, from 2011 to 2021.