New Towns of Britain Milton Keynes

After World War II, building new towns had been accepted as an effective way of reconstructing Britain’s towns and communities and dealing with the shortage of housing. The 1946 New Towns Act established an ambitious programme for building new towns to deal with the problem of overcrowded city centres. It gave the government the power to designate areas of land for new town development and set up ‘development corporations’ responsible for delivering each new town.

Stevenage, in Hertfordshire, was the first new town created under the Act, with 10 others following by 1955. In a second wave, another 14 new towns were planned and built in the 1960s. New towns contained a variety of house types. Shops, schools and leisure facilities were within easy reach.

Introduction to Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes or MK, is a new town in North Bucks, in the South East of England, planned and built around the 1960s-1970s to accommodate the overspill from London. The designated area of 34 mi² (9000 acres) was marked out to include the existing railway towns of Bletchley and Wolverton and the coaching town of Stony Stratford along with another 12 historic villages and farmland in between. The town took its name from the existing village of Milton Keynes, a few miles east of the planned centre.

Milton Keynes was strategically located to be almost equidistant from London, Birmingham as well as Oxford and Cambridge in preparation for it to grow into a regional centre. With an original population of 40,000, the population of Milton Keynes is now estimated at more than 258,000 and growing; it is one of UK’s strongest city economies in recent years. Milton Keynes has become the young regional centre that it set out to be.
 

Milton Keynes has become the young regional centre that it was set out to be 

Core idea and key principles

The housing minister designated MK a New Town in 1967 and the Milton Keynes Development Corporation was constituted outside of the elected local authorities to deliver the new town. Subsequently, consultants Llewellyn Davies, Weeks, Forestier-Walker and Bor were brought on board to develop the masterplan.

The masterplan took into consideration the Garden City concept with spacious development, generous open spaces, including a system of linear parks responding to structural determinants of the Grand Union Canal and River Ouzel that flow through the town. The strength of the masterplan was the novelty of the underpinning principles, such as the opportunity for people to participate at various levels of planning and development, adaptable urban planning with flexibility for residents, such as to extend their homes, have the option between private and public transport and a balanced choice between rented homes, homes for purchase and social housing.

Due to more recent housing demands, many private developers delivered housing, which was built with an uneven mix of social housing

Masterplan

The structure of the new town was based on a grid of roads at roughly one kilometre spacing called grid squares of about 250-300 acres each accommodating about 5000 people. Some dual carriageways with a speed of 70 mph, the same as national motorways, were included as quick transit routes to facilitate reaching your approximate destination quickly before you drop off onto a slower road. The ‘Redways’ system (tarmacked red), which accommodates both pedestrians and cyclists was developed to separate the more vulnerable users from high-speed vehicular traffic; they either cross the primary vehicular roads or go under them. Many of the Redways connect to local (see hierarchy of this service in the sketch above) centres, providing smaller local shops and services, this being a robust way to sustain good local shopping as opposed to centralised retail. A number of regional centres, with bigger chain stores and a larger retail offer, exist that will individually cater for approximately 10-15 grid squares or 20,000-30,000 people. The main shopping centre in Central Milton Keynes was designed as the high-end high street of the city.

• The intended objectives of the grid were for it to be designed in a way that:
  A. Makes it easy to understand and navigate.
  B. Facilitates congestion-free roads for use of the private motorcar using roundabouts at junctions rather than traffic lights or stop signs.
  C.Facilitates quick transit for business operations and other users of the dual carriageway grid roads.
  D. There is a good public transport system (Railways connecting sub-regional centres and national and local bus service) as an alternative to private car use.
  E. Jobs are provided in industrial areas (grid squares), which are interspersed with housing for the people living close by and act as an employment counterbalance for nearby London and Birmingham and the suburban hinterland with a net gain of people coming into the city for employment (more than leaving to work elsewhere).
  F. Local centres with bus stops and the concentration of residential facilities like shops, pubs and schools are placed roughly in a way that enable residents to walk approximately 500 meters within a grid from their homes to access such centres.

The intended outcome of the master planning was a quality of life that allowed walkability for residents, commerce and services on main roads, low congestion allowing buses to safely stop on main roads and for cars to pull off the road for shopping, school and business, housing and employment clustered around the most accessible points, varying density of housing – higher along the grid roads and lower in the centre of each grid square.

Milton Keynes as built

The Development Corporation was disbanded in 1992 and planning powers successively passed over to the Commission for New Towns, English Partnerships and then to the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA). The local authority Milton Keynes council only really finally took over full planning powers in early 2013, when it acquired the £ 31m of the HCA’s assets in Milton Keynes.

• As it was built, Milton Keynes deviated from original ideas in some ways. It is worth looking at these deviations if only to understand the impact of decisions on the townscape:
  • A large shopping centre in Central Milton Keynes was built in a single phase, which also undermined the stronghold of local shops and the older town centres, as it was intended in the original masterplan.
  • Finally, due to more recent housing demands, many private developers delivered housing, which was built with an uneven mix of social housing. However, Milton Keynes now has a strong track record of housing across the city.
   

The introduction of cycle routes over the years has strengthened non-vehicular connectivity through the town

Milton Keynes today

Scale of growth for Milton Keynes is the highest for any city in the southeast outside London and it is the regional centre it had always set out to be. This is further emphasised by the presence of the Open University, University Campus Milton Keynes and Milton Keynes College, alongside nearby world-class universities at Cranfield, Cambridge and Oxford, which has put Milton Keynes in the centre of a growing knowledge-based economy. As the regional centre, Milton Keynes has been successful in providing adequate jobs so, unlike most new towns, Milton Keynes has a net inflow of workers – more people commute in than commute out.

Given the pressure of growth, it is commendable that Milton Keynes has closely held on to the 40-year-old New Town urban planning principles and is building on those principles. For instance, the introduction of cycle routes over the years has strengthened non-vehicular connectivity through the town. Conservation of the historic landscape character and architectural character of old towns and villages has been a priority of Milton Keynes right from the start and this still continues. Heritage in Milton Keynes is very important and is beginning to be recognised at the local and national level; Milton Keynes has over 1000 listed buildings and 27 conservation areas.

Lessons learned

Milton Keynes is a unique town in England, which is quite different to most other places due to its grid layout. While the grid is undoubtedly the dominant townscape feature, it lent itself naturally to creating the public and private parts of city life, by simply altering the relationship between the buildings, the public realm and landscape. It is possible for a square grid layout to appear unimaginative and ubiquitous, but in Milton Keynes the interaction between the grid and natural features has been handled in a way that makes the layout responsive to the local characters.

In urban planning terms, the impact of decisions made at the master planning stage, on the outcomes in townscapes and ultimately in the quality of life, is perhaps the key lesson to be drawn from Milton Keynes. For the masterplan to play a central role in the development of new towns, it must underpin the core principles that are consistently applied through the design development process, while leaving room for flexibility and adaptability as the plan is delivered.

As the growth of Milton Keynes has continued since the late 1960s, the changes to the governance in that time have led to a system today that is somewhat removed from the Development Corporation model. This, coupled with the changes in the way we live today compared to the way of life in 1960s, means that the original principles need to be continually reviewed and adapted. The local authority delivers this responsibility by outlining ambitions for the city in Local Development Plans. The most recent one is the Core Strategy adopted in July 2013. This will be reviewed and updated in the upcoming ‘Plan: MK’, which started its  first round of public consultation in the autumn of 2014.

Milton Keynes City Discovery Centre (MKCDC)

Their primary objective is to promote a greater appreciation and understanding of the historical, natural and built environments of Milton Keynes.MKCDC is an educational charity that tells the story of the New Town of Milton Keynes and its history and heritage from the earliest settlements.The Milton Keynes New Towns archive and research library is based on site. This contains a number of private collections as well as a large component of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation material. These collections are available for public access and currently large amounts of digitally scanned slides and photos are being transferred onto the web.They conduct a variety of lectures and tours in geography, environmental education, urban development and city planning for scholars and students, as well as professionals and government officials from all over the world. MKCDC receives approximately 60-80 delegations a year from the USA, China, Australia, Europe and more recently Africa and India. Three-hour education tours are provided at a reasonable price and these include a historic overview and more recent development scenarios lecture, with a tour going out into Milton Keynes, using the city as a model. Groups have to provide their own transport and where necessary a translator. Lectures can be tailored to address specific areas of interest. Where necessary they bring in one of their associates who is a specialist or expert in their field.School children are engaged in the history of Milton Keynes using experiential learning and re-enactments for out-of-the-classroom history days as well as engaging family and the public during open days on our Medieval Abbey site. The site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. On the Bradwell Abbey site they also host a variety of arts, music and heritage open days and community/family events.

School children are engaged in the history of Milton Keynes using experiential learning and re-enactments for out-of-the-classroom history days

Milton Keynes Council

The Milton Keynes Council is the local public authority responsible for providing more than 200 services to thousands of residents across the borough. These range from services for children and young people, highways and infrastructure improvements to leisure, sporting facilities, libraries and waste and recycling collections.

Residents of Milton Keynes are urged to have their say on major planning blueprints, which will shape where they live and the way they live. In September 2014 the council launched a 12-week consultation about Plan: MK, the next evolution of its Core Strategy, reviewing it and extending the end date to at least 2031, so it will form the backbone of policies on future housing, transport links and infrastructure such as schools, health centres and leisure facilities.

All photos: MKCDC (archives)