Director and Professor, Faculty of Science – School of Urban and Regional Planning | Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Faculty of Science

Kristof Van Assche is a Professor and the Director of the University of Alberta’s School of Urban & Regional Planning.

He’s interested in rural and resource communities, as well as northern and remote development, and winter city planning & design, which he has taught in Canada, the Netherlands, and Poland. He visited plenty of cold places, and published on winter planning & branding in Edmonton, on arctic local development, the provincial North in Canada, and co-wrote a book on community development and adaptation in Newfoundland & Labrador, with Monica Gruezmacher.

Winter city design, for him, is ideally embedded in a broader strategy, yet is an essential element of local planning & development.