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Main article: History of Milton Keynes Birth of a "New City" In the 1960s, the British government decided that a further generation of new towns in the south-east of England was needed to relieve housing congestion in London. Population trend of Borough and Urban Area 1801–2001 Since the 1950s, overspill housing for several London boroughs had been constructed in Bletchley.[5][6][7] Further studies[8][9] in the 1960s identified north Buckinghamshire as a possible site for a large new town, a new city,[10] encompassing the existing towns of Bletchley, Stony Stratford and Wolverton. The New Town (informally and in planning documents, "New City") was to be the biggest yet, with a target population of 250,000,[11] in a 'designated area' of 21,850 acres (34.1 sq mi; 88.4 km2).[12] The name "Milton Keynes" was taken from the existing village of Milton Keynes on the site.[13] The site was deliberately located equidistant from London, Birmingham, Leicester, Oxford and Cambridge with the intention[14] that it would be self-sustaining and eventually become a major regional centre in its own right. Planning control was taken from elected local authorities and delegated to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC). The Corporation's strongly modernist designs featured regularly in the magazines Architectural Design and the Architects' Journal. MKDC was determined to learn from the mistakes made in the earlier New Towns and revisit the Garden City ideals. They set in place the characteristic grid roads that run between districts ('grid squares'), as well as the intensive planting, lakes and parkland that are so evident today. Central Milton Keynes was not intended to be a traditional town centre but a business and shopping district that supplemented the Local Centres in most of the grid squares.[13] This non-hierarchical devolved city plan was a departure from the English New Towns tradition and envisaged a wide range of industry and diversity of housing styles and tenures across the city. The largest and almost the last of the British New Towns, Milton Keynes has stood the test of time far better than most, and has proved flexible and adaptable.[15] The radical grid plan was inspired by the work of Californian urban theorist Melvin M. Webber (1921–2006), described by the founding architect of Milton Keynes, Derek Walker, as the "father of the city".[16] Webber thought that telecommunications meant that the old idea of a city as a concentric cluster was out of date and that cities which enabled people to travel around them readily would be the thing of the future achieving "community without propinquity" for residents.[17] The Government wound up MKDC in 1992, 25 years after the new town was created, transferring control to the Commission for New Towns (CNT) and then finally to English Partnerships, with the planning function returning to local authority control (since 1974 and the Local Government Act 1972, the Borough of Milton Keynes). From 2004 to 2011, a Government quango, the Milton Keynes Partnership, had development control powers to accelerate the growth of Milton Keynes. Along with many other towns and boroughs, Milton Keynes competed for formal city status in the 2000, 2002 and 2012 competitions, but was not successful. Nevertheless, the term "city" is used by its citizens, local media and bus services to describe itself, perhaps because the term "town" is taken to mean one of the constituent towns. Road signs refer to "Central Milton Keynes" or "Shopping" when directing traffic to its centre. Prior history Reproductions of the Milton Keynes Hoard (Milton Keynes Museum) The area that was to become Milton Keynes encompassed a landscape that has a rich historic legacy. The area to be developed was largely farmland and undeveloped villages, but with evidence of permanent settlement dating back to the Bronze Age. Before construction began, every area was subject to detailed archaeological investigation: doing so has provided a unique insight into the history of a large sample of the landscape of south-central England. There is evidence of Iron Age, Romano-British, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Medieval and Industrial revolution settlements. Collections[18] of oral history covering the 20th century completes a picture that is described in detail in another article. Bletchley Park, the site of World War II British codebreaking and Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic digital computer, is within the town boundaries. When the boundary of Milton Keynes was defined in 1967, some 40,000 people[19] lived in three towns and seven villages in the "designated area" of 21,863 acres (88.48 km2). Urban design The concepts that heavily influenced the design of the town are described in detail in article urban planning – see 'cells' under Planning and aesthetics (referring to grid squares). See also article single-use zoning. Since the radical plan form and large scale of Milton Keynes attracted international attention, early phases of development include work by celebrated architects, including Sir Richard MacCormac, Lord Norman Foster, Henning Larsen, Ralph Erskine, John Winter, and Martin Richardson.[20] The Corporation itself attracted talented young architects led by the young and charismatic Derek Walker. In the modernist Miesian tradition were the Pineham Sewage Works, which Derek Walker regarded as his finest achievement,[citation needed] and the Shopping Building designed by Stuart Mosscrop and Christopher Woodward, which the Twentieth Century Society inter alia regards as the 'most distinguished' twentieth century retail building in Britain.[21][22] The contextual tradition that ran alongside it is exemplified by the Corporation's infill scheme at Cofferidge Close, Stony Stratford, designed by Wayland Tunley, which carefully inserts into a historic stretch of High Street a modern retail facility, offices and car park. The Development Corporation also led an ambitious Public art programme. The urban design has not been universally praised, however. Francis Tibbalds, president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, described the centre of Milton Keynes as "bland, rigid, sterile, and totally boring."[23] Grid roads and grid squares The geography of Milton Keynes – the railway line, Watling Street, Grand Union Canal, M1 motorway – sets up a very strong north-south axis. If you've got to build a city between (them) it is very natural to take a pen and draw the rungs of a ladder. Ten miles by six is the size of this city – 22,000 acres. Do you lay it out like an American city, rigid orthogonal from side to side? Being more sensitive in 1966-7, the designers decided that the grid concept should apply but should be a lazy grid following the flow of land, its valleys, its ebbs and flows. That would be nicer to look at, more economical and efficient to build, and would sit more beautifully as a landscape intervention. Professor David Lock, MBE[24] Main articles: Milton Keynes grid road system and List of districts in Milton Keynes Milton Keynes Development Corporation planned the major road layout according to street hierarchy principles, using a grid pattern of approximately 1 km (0.62 mi) intervals, rather than on the more conventional radial pattern found in older settlements. Major internal roads run between communities, rather than through them: these distributor roads are known locally as grid roads and the spaces between them – the districts – are known as grid squares.[25] Intervals of 1 km (0.62 mi) were chosen so that people would always be within walking distance of a bus stop. Consequently each grid square is a semi-autonomous community, making a unique collective of 100 clearly identifiable neighbourhoods within the overall urban environment. The grid squares have a variety of development styles, ranging from conventional urban development and industrial parks to original rural and modern urban and pseudo-rural developments. Most grid squares have Local Centres, intended as local retail hubs and most with community facilities as well. Originally intended under the Master Plan to sit alongside the Grid Roads, the Local Centres were mostly in fact built embedded in the communities. Roundabout junctions were built at intersections because the grid roads were intended to carry large volumes of traffic: this type of junction is efficient at dealing with these volumes. The major roads are dual carriageway, the others are single carriageway. Along one side of each single carriageway grid road there is a (grassed) reservation to permit dualling or additional transport infrastructure at a later date. The edges of each grid square are landscaped and densely planted, some additionally have berms. Traffic movements are fast, with relatively little congestion since there are alternative routes to any particular destination. The national speed limit applies on dual carriageway sections of the grid roads (70 mph (113 km/h)) and most single carriageway grid roads (60 mph (97 km/h)), although some single carriageway speed limits have now been reduced to 40 mph (64 km/h). Consequently the risk to unwary pedestrians and turning traffic is significant, although pedestrians rarely need to cross grid roads at grade, as underpasses exist in several places along each stretch of all of the grid roads. However, the new districts to be added by the expansion plans for Milton Keynes are departing from this model, with less separation and using 'at grade' crossings. Monitoring station data[26] shows that pollution is lower than in other settlements of a similar size. This can be partially attributed to the large number of trees, especially as trees line grid roads in most places. Cycleways Cycleway network in Milton Keynes. (Extracted from Openstreetmap.org © OpenStreetMap contributors). Main articles: Milton Keynes redway system and Segregated cycle facilities There is a separate cycleway network, the "redways", that runs through the grid-squares and often runs alongside the grid-road network. This was designed to segregate slow moving cycle and pedestrian traffic from fast moving motor traffic. In practice, it is mainly used for leisure cycling rather than commuting, perhaps because the cycle routes are shared with pedestrians, cross the grid-roads via bridge or underpass rather than at grade, and because some take meandering scenic routes rather than straight lines. Height The Hub:MK, built between 2006 and 2008. The taller glass tower, Manhattan House, has fourteen stories. The original design guidance declared that "no building [be] taller than the tallest tree". However, the Milton Keynes Partnership, in its expansion plans for Milton Keynes, believed that Central Milton Keynes (and elsewhere) needed "landmark buildings" and subsequently lifted the height restriction for the area. As a result, high rise buildings have been built in the central business district. Four of the pedestrian underpasses were closed in order to 'normalise' the streetscape of Central Milton Keynes and the character of the area was set to change under government pressure to increase densities of development. These changes are being opposed by pressure groups such as Urban Eden and the Milton Keynes Forum. More recent local plans have protected the existing boulevard framework and underpasses following the dissolution of Milton Keynes Partnership. Recent large-scale buildings include The Pinnacle:MK on Midsummer Boulevard and the Vizion development on Avebury Boulevard. The Pinnacle was the largest office building to be constructed in Milton Keynes in 25 years. More recently the Network Rail National Centre has been built at the western limit of Silbury Boulevard; this building occupies a large land area but only rises to the equivalent of six stories; a return towards the design of the original Central Milton Keynes developments. Linear parks Caldecotte Lake, Milton Keynes The flood plains of the Great Ouse and of its tributaries (the Ouzel and some brooks) have been protected as linear parks that run right through Milton Keynes. The Grand Union Canal is another green route (and demonstrates the level geography of the area – there is just one minor lock in its entire 10 mi (16 km) meandering route through from the southern boundary near Fenny Stratford to the "Iron Trunk" Aqueduct over the Ouse at Wolverton at its northern boundary). The Park system was designed by landscape architect Peter Youngman,[citation needed] who also developed landscape precepts for all development areas: groups of grid squares were to be planted with different selections of trees and shrubs in order to give them distinct identities. However the landscaping of parks and of the grid roads was evolved under the leadership of Neil Higson, who from 1977 took over as Chief Landscape Architect and made the original grand but not entirely practical landscape plan more subtle. Youngman[citation needed] introduced a policy of creating "settings, strings, beads" for landscape features: 'settings' for historic villages and landscape features, 'strings' of landscape to make the linear parks hang together and 'beads' of public space where residents might linger.[citation needed] Higson also made the landscaping of the Grid Roads,[citation needed] one of the features of Milton Keynes, more subtle, with 'windows' cut into the roadside planting so that motorists travelling through had a sense of the major town they were in; early critics had said of Milton Keynes 'there is no there there', as the town could not be seen by the motorist just passing through. "City in the forest" The original Development Corporation design concept aimed[16] for a "forest city" and its foresters planted millions of trees from its own nursery in Newlands in the following years. As of 2006, the urban area has 20 million trees. Following the winding up of the Development Corporation, the lavish landscapes of the Grid Roads and of the major parks were transferred to The Milton Keynes Parks Trust, a charity which is independent from the municipal authority and which was intended to resist pressures to build on the parks over time. The Parks Trust is endowed with a portfolio of commercial properties, the income of which pay for the upkeep of the green spaces, a maintenance model which has attracted international attention.[27] Further development plans One of the new 'city streets', an extension of H7 Chaffron Way, in Broughton Gate. Main article: Expansion plans for Milton Keynes In January 2004, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced[28] the Government's plan to double the population of Milton Keynes by 2026. He appointed English Partnerships (EP) to do so, taking planning controls away from Milton Keynes Borough Council and making EP the statutory planning authority. Their proposal for the next phase of expansion moves away from grid squares to large scale, mixed use, higher density development. The more detailed article expands on the details of their proposals. As the first stage in that plan, the Government expanded[29] the boundaries of the designated area, adding large green-field expansion sites to the east and west that were to be developed by 2015. In June 2004 Milton Keynes Partnership Committee (MKPC), was created by the Government and was a committee of the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), the national housing and regeneration agency for England. MKPC was created to ensure a co-ordinated approach to planning and delivery of growth and development in the ‘new city’. Milton Keynes Partnership was disbanded in 2011,[30] holding its last meeting in March of that year. Its functions were folded back into the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), with Milton Keynes Council handling planning permission for established areas of MK. Culture 65,000 capacity by the Green Day Bullet in a Bible concert at National Bowl The open air National Bowl is a 65,000 capacity venue for large scale events. The 1,400 seat Milton Keynes Theatre opened in 1999. The theatre has an unusual feature: the ceiling can be lowered closing off the third tier (gallery) to create a more intimate space for smaller scale productions. There are further performance spaces in Bletchley, Wolverton, Leadenhall, Shenley Church End, Stantonbury and Walton Hall. The municipal public art gallery[31] (Milton Keynes Gallery beside the main theatre) presents free exhibitions of international contemporary art. In Wavendon, The Stables[32] provides a venue for jazz, blues, folk, rock, classical, pop and world music. It is closely associated with jazz artists Cleo Laine and the late John Dankworth. The venue also hosts an annual summer camp for young musicians. There are two museums: the Bletchley Park complex, which as well as housing the museum of wartime cryptography, also hosts the National Museum of Computing including a working replica of the Colossus computer, and the Milton Keynes Museum, which includes the Stacey Hill Collection of rural life that existed before the foundation of the new town. MK also has a literature scene, with groups like Speakeasy[33] meeting regularly and hosting performance events, and MK's only poetry magazine, Monkey Kettle coming out twice a year. In addition, two performance poetry groups exist – Poetry Kapow!,[34] an offshoot of Monkey Kettle though now independent of the parent organisation, specialising in live, multi-discipline, interactive poetry/art/music events, usually featuring slams; and Tongue in Chic,[35] a regular open mic poetry event which features headline poets such as John Hegley. In May 2011, the outgoing Mayor, Debbie Brock announced the appointment of Mark Niel as the first official Milton Keynes' Poet Laureate.[36] In July 2010, Milton Keynes' first independent Central Arts Centre was opened by Radio One DJ Jo Whiley. The centre is regenerated from the disused Central Bus Station and former Chicago Rock Cafe. It is home to the existing "Buszy"[37] Skate Plaza, which is where the name for the regenerated venue has come from. It is managed and operated by Make a Difference[38] a community interest company which in 2011 was awarded a "Big Society" award for their positive activities and opportunities for young people and the wider community. The Buszy is the social enterprise arm of Make a Difference. All profits raised by the cultural activity at the venue are re-invested into Make a Difference. The venue hosts independent cinema, live performance, gigs, art shows/exhibitions, dance activity, a thrift shop, office and conference facilities and the city's only social enterprise hub. Westbury Arts Centre is situated in the west of Milton Keynes, near Shenley Wood. And is based in a 16th Century grade 2 listed Farmhouse building. The Art Centre has been providing spaces for professional working artist to create work since 1994. The oldest part of the house was built in the sixteenth century and has been greatly extended over the years. It has several acres of garden and is home to several protected species of bats and newts. Including moat. Liz Leyh's iconic "Concrete Cows" Milton Keynes also boasts several choirs – the OU Choir, the Milton Keynes Chorale, the New English Singers, the Cornerstone Choir, Quorum,[39] and others, along with a variety of amateur drama groups, and amateur musical theatre groups. Milton Keynes Forum[40] is the registered civic society for MK. Public sculpture Public sculpture in Milton Keynes[41] includes work by Philip Jackson, Nicolas Moreton, Ronald Rae and Elisabeth Frink. Education University Centre Milton Keynes. The Open University's headquarters are based in the Walton Hall district, though as this is a distance learning institution, the only students resident on campus are approximately 200 full-time postgraduates. Cranfield University, an all-postgraduate institution, is in nearby Cranfield, Bedfordshire. Milton Keynes College provides further education up to foundation degree level, however a Postgraduate Certificate in Education[42] course is available; run in partnership with and accredited by Oxford Brookes University. In 1991 Leicester Polytechnic established a purpose built polytechnic campus in Kents Hill in Milton Keynes, opposite the Open University's Walton Hall site, which was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1992. This was originally branded 'The Polytechnic: Milton Keynes'. Later in 1992 Leicester Polytechnic gained university status and was renamed De Montfort University and the site was rebranded De Montfort University Milton Keynes. However, DMU closed the MK site in 2003 and the Open University has expanded to take over the buildings. Although the town does not yet have its own conventional local university, its founders hope that the University Campus Milton Keynes will be the seed for a future 'Milton Keynes University'. It is currently the UK's largest population centre without its own university proper. Like many parts of the UK, the state secondary schools in Milton Keynes are Comprehensive schools, such as Stantonbury Campus and Denbigh School, although schools in the rest of Buckinghamshire still use the Tripartite System. Results are above the national average, though below that of the rest of Buckinghamshire – but the demography of Milton Keynes is also far closer to the national average than is the latter. Access to selective schools is still possible in Milton Keynes as the grammar schools in Buckingham and Aylesbury accept some pupils from within the unitary authority area, with Buckinghamshire County Council operating bus services to ferry pupils to the schools. Private schools in Milton Keynes include the 3 to 18 mixed sex Webber Independent School[43] and the 2½ to 11 mixed sex Milton Keynes Preparatory School.[44] The Safety Centre is a purpose-built interactive centre which provides safety education to visiting schools and youth groups via its full-size interactive demonstrations known as Hazard Alley. Another educational organisation is the Milton Keynes City Discovery Centre[45] at Bradwell Abbey, which holds an extensive archive about Milton Keynes. MKCDC is therefore a research facility, as well as offering a broad education programme (with a focus on urban geography and local history) to schools, universities and professionals. MKCDC also holds an annual programme of events at the medieval priory site on which they are based. Milton Keynes (Listeni/ˌmɪltən ˈkiːnz/ mil-tən-keenz), sometimes abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, England. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes and was formally designated as a new town on 23 January 1967,[2] with the design brief to become a 'city' in scale. It is located about 45 mi (72 km) north-west of London At designation, its 89 km2 (34 sq mi) area incorporated the existing towns of Bletchley, Wolverton and Stony Stratford along with another fifteen villages and farmland in between. It took its name from the existing village of Milton Keynes, a few miles east of the planned centre. At the 2011 census the population of the Milton Keynes urban area, including the adjacent Newport Pagnell and Woburn Sands, was 229,941,[1] and that of the wider borough, which has been a unitary authority independent of Buckinghamshire County Council since 1997, was 248,800,[3] (compared with a population for the Borough equivalent area of around 53,000 for the same area in 1961),[4] with almost all the approx 196,000 population increase since 2001 arising in the urban area. |
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