CityLab’s UK bureau chief and European correspondent Feargus O’Sullivan has been dispatched to the Czech Republic to drink beer moderate a panel at In/visible City, a two-day conference running today and tomorrow in Prague. It’s organized by reSITE, a Czech-based nonprofit that focuses on urban development and design. The group’s stated mission: To create “more lovable and livable cities.”

The city of the future as a city of the past—what should we picture exactly?

When people ask me about the future of the city. I often answer that it will look like the city of the past. It’s based on infrastructure planned and built several generations ago, even centuries. That’s the invisible city inherited from our ancestors. So if you’re looking for the future of a city, look back to see how growth and spatial challenges were solved.

Cities didn’t foresee the overwhelming impact of cars, for example. The highway and road infrastructure, at least in America, have devastated cities, not improved them. We’re spending trillions to remove most of them. That’s probably one of the few visionary dreams of the mid-20th century that really came true and ushered in a dramatic change in our lifestyle. People were able to travel longer distances. Oil became the world’s most valuable commodity. This was followed by a deterioration of the environment, global warming, urban blight. All this is interconnected.