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Forum 2000, a conference on architecture and urbanism, was held in Prague between 10 and 12 October. With the title ‘The World We Want to Live In’, the conference attracted nearly 100 global leaders in business, politics, academia, religion and civil society to participate in discussions and debates on key issues facing our civilisation.

Poet, playwright and former President of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic Václav Havel addressed the opening ceremony of Forum 2000 last month. He opened with thoughts on the sprawl which continues to blur the limits of Prague and to engulf the surrounding countryside and villages:

Years ago when I used to drive by car from Prague to our country cottage in Eastern Bohemia, the journey from the city centre to the signboard that marked the city limits took about fifteen minutes. Then came meadows, forests, fields and villages. These days the selfsame journey takes a good forty minutes or more, and it is impossible to know whether I have left the city or not. What was until recently clearly recognisable as the city is now losing its boundaries and with them its identity.

He continued with further remarks on current threats to the identity, individuality and heterogeneity of places, and on the state of a global civilisation too proud of its knowledge to recognise the important tempering roles of mystery, the infinite and the eternal.