Darren Smith is an alumnus of the Virginia Tech UAP program, having completed his graduate work in 2006 at the National Capital Region campus. In addition to having been a student in the Urban Affairs and Planning program, he currently works for the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) as the Policy Representative for Smart Growth and State and Local Issues. He serves as NAR’s representative on transportation-related advocacy coalitions including the Transportation for America Coalition and the Complete Streets Coalition. He also directs NAR’s Land Use Initiative, which provides technical assistance to state and local Realtor® associations dealing with issues of land use planning and regulation. Additionally, he helps plan an annual conference for that group, and invited UAP faculty member Joe Schilling to present there in July on planning, zoning, and code enforcement. Darren has been with NAR since November 2010, and works for another graduate of Virginia Tech’s planning program, Joe Molinaro (MURP ’79).
Before coming to NAR, and following completion of his Master’s of Urban and Regional Planning degree at Virginia Tech in early 2006, Darren worked as a transportation planner for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG), the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Washington DC metro area. While there, he was involved with public outreach efforts, scenario planning, and management of MWCOG’s technical assistance program for local jurisdictions, the Transportation/Land-Use Connections (TLC) Program. Between 2000 and 2004, he worked at the national headquarters of Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC), a non-profit organization that promotes the preservation and conversion of unused rail corridors as multi-use trails.
Darren has presented at several conferences related to transportation and livable communities, including the 2011 APA Federal Policy and Program Briefing, the 2008 APA conference, and the 2007 Transportation Research Board 5th International Visualization in Transportation Symposium, and also served on the 2006 expert selection panel for the Federal Highway Administration’s National Scenic Byways Program.
He completed his undergraduate work at American University in Washington, D.C., and is a native of Lawrence, Kansas.
When asked about his scholarly interests, Darren admits he has far too many areas of scholarly interest, which is partly why he went into planning – for him, it combines so many topics such as economics, public policy, sociology, history, etc., all of which he finds fascinating. He is particularly interested in the interplay between transportation investment choices and land use patterns; the ability of government to effectively create incentives/disincentives for concentrated, mixed-use development; and the phenomenon of homeowners associations and what they mean for how Americans think about the role of government; among other topics.
When asked how his education at Virginia Tech has applied to his professional experience, Darren stated “I don’t think a day goes by in my professional life when I don’t apply things I learned in the UAP program. In particular, a big part of my job is to be able to analyze how proposed plans and policies affect the workings of the housing market and the overall growth of a community. I have also used the GIS and transportation modeling skills I attained in the program.”
When Darren decided he wanted to pursue an advanced degree in planning, he looked at several schools and “really couldn’t believe my luck when I realized there was a top-rated planning school with well-regarded faculty and a campus just a short bike ride from where I lived.” He says the fact that the program affords students a good deal of flexibility in plotting their curriculum and features many instructors brought in directly from the professional and policy worlds by virtue of its location in the DC area was very appealing to him.
Darren was pleased to find that UAP had the right balance of the theoretical and the practical educational offerings. He received the skills he needed to qualify for a wide variety of jobs, and had the opportunity to really think about planning concepts and get inspired to work toward positive change—“It also never ceases to amaze me how great a professional and social network I have here in the DC area because of my cohort of UAP graduates.”
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