The radical plan, form and scale of Milton Keynes attracted international attention.
Norman Foster,
Henning Larsen,
Ralph Erskine,
John Winter, and Martin Richardson. The
Development Corporation also led an ambitious
public art programme. The urban design has not been universally praised. In 1980, the then president of the
Royal Town Planning Institute, Francis Tibbalds, described Central Milton Keynes as "bland, rigid, sterile, and totally boring." Michael Edwards, a member of the original consultancy team, believes that there were weaknesses in their proposal and that the Development Corporation implemented it badly.
Grid roads and grid squares The Milton Keynes Development Corporation planned the major road layout according to
street hierarchy principles, using a
grid pattern of approximately intervals, rather than on the more conventional
radial pattern found in older settlements. Major distributor roads run between communities, rather than through them: these distributor roads are known locally as
grid roads and the spaces between them the neighbourhoods are known as
grid squares (though few are actually square or even
rectilinear). This spacing was chosen so that people would always be within six minutes' walking distance of a grid-road 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 suburban developments. Most grid squares have a local centre, intended as a retail hub, and many have community facilities as well. Each of the original villages is the heart of its own grid-square. Originally intended under the master plan to sit alongside the grid roads, these local centres were mostly in fact built embedded in the communities.
Redways There is a separate network (approximately total length) of
cycle and pedestrian routes 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. It is so called because it is generally surfaced with red tarmac. The national
Sustrans national cycle network routes
6 and
51 take advantage of this system.
Height in
CMK. The original design guidance declared that commercial building heights in the centre should not exceed six storeys, with a limit of three storeys for houses (elsewhere), paraphrased locally as "no building taller than the tallest tree". In contrast, 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.
Linear parks on
National Cycle Route 51 The
floodplains 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; these were identified as important landscape and flood-management assets from the outset. At ten times larger than London's
Hyde Park and a third larger than
Richmond Park the landscape architects realised that the
Royal Parks model would not be appropriate or affordable and drew on their
National Park experience. As Bendixson and Platt (1992) write: "They divided the Ouzel Valley into 'strings, beads and settings'. The 'strings' are well-maintained routes, be they for walking, bicycling or riding; the 'beads' are sports centres, lakeside cafes and other activity areas; the 'settings' are self-managed land-uses such as woods, riding paddocks, a golf course and a farm". 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 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 initial
park system was planned by Peter Youngman (Chief
Landscape Architect), who also developed landscape precepts for all development areas: groups of grid squares were to be planted with different selections of trees and shrubs to give them distinct identities. The detailed planning and landscape design of parks and of the grid roads was evolved under the leadership of Neil Higson, who from 1977 took over from Youngman. In a national comparison of urban areas by open space available to residents, Milton Keynes ranked highest in the UK. Milton Keynes is unusual in that most of the parks are owned and managed by a charity, the
Milton Keynes Parks Trust rather than the local authority, to ensure that the management of the city's green spaces is largely independent of the council's expenditure priorities.
Forest city concept The Development Corporation's original design concept aimed for a "forest city" and its foresters planted millions of trees from its own nursery in Newlands in the following years. , there are 22 million trees and shrubs in public open spaces. , approximately 25% of the urban area is parkland or woodland. It includes two
Sites of Special Scientific Interest,
Howe Park Wood and
Oxley Mead.
Centre As a key element of the planners' vision, Milton Keynes has a purpose built centre, with a very large "covered high street" shopping centre,
a theatre, municipal
art gallery, hotels,
central business district,
an ecumenical church,
Milton Keynes Civic Offices and
central railway station.
Campbell Park, a formal park extending east from the business area to the Grand Union Canal, is described in the
Pevsner Architectural Guides as " most imaginative park to have been laid out in Britain in the 20th century". The park is
listed (grade 2) by
Historic England,
Original towns and villages broke a large number of
Axis codes and
ciphers, including the German
Enigma and
Lorenz ciphers. village, beside the playing fields Milton Keynes consists of many pre-existing towns and villages that anchored the urban design, as well as new infill developments. The modern-day urban area outside the original six towns (Bletchley, Fenny Stratford, Newport Pagnell, Stony Stratford, Wolverton, and Woburn Sands) was largely rural farmland but included many picturesque North Buckinghamshire villages and hamlets:
Bradwell village and
its Abbey,
Broughton,
Caldecotte,
Great Linford,
Loughton,
Milton Keynes Village,
New Bradwell,
Shenley Brook End,
Shenley Church End,
Simpson,
Stantonbury,
Tattenhoe,
Tongwell,
Walton,
Water Eaton,
Wavendon,
Willen,
Great and Little Woolstone,
Woughton on the Green. These historical settlements were made the focal points of their respective grid square. Every other district has an historical antecedent, if only in original farms or even field names.
Bletchley was first recorded in the 12th century as
Blechelai.
Its station was an important junction (the
London and North Western Railway with the Oxford-Cambridge
Varsity Line), leading to the substantial urban growth in the town in the
Victorian period. It expanded to absorb the village of
Water Eaton and town of
Fenny Stratford.
Bradwell is a traditional rural village with earthworks of a Norman
motte and bailey and parish church.
Bradwell Abbey, a former
Benedictine Priory and
scheduled monument, was of major economic importance in this area of North Buckinghamshire before its
dissolution in 1524. Nowadays there is only a small medieval chapel and a manor house occupying the site.
New Bradwell, to the north of Bradwell and east of Wolverton, was built specifically for railway workers. The level bed of the old
Wolverton to Newport Pagnell Line near here has been converted to a redway, making it a favoured route for cycling. A working
windmill is sited on a hill outside the village.
Great Linford appears in the
Domesday Book as
Linforde, and features a church dedicated to
Saint Andrew, dating from 1215. Today, the outer buildings of the 17th century
manor house form an
arts centre. The former Rose and Crown Inn on the High Street is reputedly the last place the
Princes in the Tower were seen alive. The manor house of
Walton village,
Walton Hall, is the headquarters of the
Open University and the tiny
parish church (deconsecrated) is in its grounds. The small parish church (1680) at
Willen was designed by the architect and physicist
Robert Hooke. Nearby, by
Willen Lake, there is a
Buddhist Temple and the
Peace Pagoda, which was built in 1980 and was the first built by the
Nipponzan-Myōhōji Buddhist Order in the western world. The original
Wolverton was a medieval settlement just north and west of today's town. The
ridge and furrow pattern of agriculture can still be seen in the nearby fields. The 12th century (rebuilt in 1819)
Church of the Holy Trinity still stands next to the Norman
motte and bailey site. Modern Wolverton was a 19th-century New Town built to house the workers at the
Wolverton railway works, which built engines and carriages for the
London and North Western Railway. Among the smaller villages and hamlets are three
Broughton,
Loughton and
Woughton on the Green that are of note in that their names each use a different pronunciation of the
ough letter sequence in English. ==Education==