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|Map= Milton Keynes dot.png
|Population= 184,506
|Place= Milton Keynes
|District= Milton Keynes
|Region= South East England
|Ceremonial= Buckinghamshire
|Traditional= Buckinghamshire
|Police= Thames Valley
|Constituency= North East Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes South West
|Euro= South East England
|PostalTown= MILTON KEYNES
|PostCode= MK1 - MK15
|DiallingCode= 01908
|GridReference= SP852387
}}

Milton Keynes is a Purpose-built , high technology city in South East England . It is located about 45 miles (75 km) north west of London and approximately mid-way between Oxford and Cambridge . With Other Towns it forms the Unitary Authority of the Borough Of Milton Keynes .


Origins

The "New City" was designated by Parliament in 1967 and deliberately located roughly equidistant between London, Birmingham , Leicester , Oxford and Cambridge with the intention that it would be self sustaining and eventually become a major regional centre in its own right. It contains within its boundaries the towns of Bletchley , Wolverton and Stony Stratford and Many Smaller Villages . Milton Keynes is the largest of the so-called " New Town s" built during the 1960s to allow for urban expansion in the southeast of England and is the only new town planned from the outset to be designated as a "New City" . When Milton Keynes was designated, some 60,000 people lived in what is now the Borough. By the 2001 Census, the population had reached 177,500 (181,000 in the contiguous urban area) and is projected to exceed 300,000 by 2030, making the New Town area substantially larger than many official cities.

Design and planning was delegated to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation . Its strongly Post-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 between districts and the intensive planting and park-land that are so appreciated today. However, the Government wound up MKDC in 1992, transferring control to the Commission for New Towns (CNT) and then finally to English Partnerships . Design guidance was weakened and subsequent Built Environment developments are considered barely distinguishable from the anonymous Suburb s of other towns and cities around the UK. Conversely, the ''"river valleys, water courses and extensive landscape buffers within Milton Keynes provide a good example of how environmental assets can be integrated into new development."'' (MK&SM Study 2.85) . The environment is under control of the Parks Trust and continues to be one of the major attractions to living in the city.

The New City encompassed a landscape that has a rich historic legacy. The CLUTCH Club Milton Keynes site holds a collection of archival studies of Milton Keynes is maintained by the Milton Keynes Heritage Association , which "exists to encourage and develop co-operation and co-ordination between all members having an interest in heritage within the Milton Keynes district."


City status

Although legally still a town (since City Status In The United Kingdom is only possible through grant of Letters Patent ), Milton Keynes was designed to be, and behaves as, a small city. The term "city" is invariably used locally, since the term "town" generally refers one of the original settlements (see Below ).


Urban design: Layout and Urban Form of the New City

The concepts that heavily influenced the design of the city are described in detail in article Urban Planning - see "cells" (= grid squares) under


Milton Keynes Development Corporation planned the city's layout on a grid pattern of approximately 1 km interval, rather than on the more conventional . 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. Roundabout s were chosen at junctions since the grid roads were intended to carry large volumes of traffic: this type of junction is efficient at dealing with these volumes. Along the edges of each grid road there are large grassed areas. This is deliberate and allowed for roads to be upgraded from single carriageway to become dual carriageways as traffic volumes dictate. The edges of each grid square are heavily landscaped and some are banked up and densely planted. The purpose of this was to reduce traffic noise for residents but traffic noise is still significant at some locations. Traffic movements are fast, with little congestion since there are many alternative routes to a particular destination. National speed limits apply on most of the grid roads but consequently the risk to unwary pedestrians and turning traffic is significant. High speed accidents have resulted in deaths and serious injuries that might otherwise have been avoided. Monitoring station data shows that pollution is lower than in similar size settlements elsewhere.


Linear parks

The Flood Plain s of the Great Ouse and of its tributaries (the Ouzel and some brooks) have been protected as linear parks that run right through the city. The Grand Union Canal is another green route (and demonstrates the level topology of the city - there is just one minor lock in its entire 10 mile route through from Fenny Stratford to the "Iron Trunk" Aqueduct at Wolverton . The Milton Keynes Redway System of cycleways and footpaths uses these and other routes.


Further development plans

In January 2004, Deputy Prime Minister to do so, taking planning controls away from Milton Keynes Borough Council and making EP the statutory planning authority. English Partnership's proposal for the next phase of expansion moves away from grid squares to large scale, mixed use, higher density development. They hope that this will lead to a greener, more sustainable Milton Keynes, less dependent upon the private car. Their aim is to encourage a shift towards alternative transportation such as buses and Cycling as well as providing a more pedestrian-friendly environment, particularly within Central Milton Keynes ''("CMK")''.

There will be 3 main areas for expansion / urban intensification. The most significant of these are in CMK and at the northern and southern edges of Campbell Park . Within CMK, development will intensify the existing provision, the most significant being a mixed use office and retail development to be known as CBX III. Other proposals for CMK will see the removal and building upon the somewhat profligate surface car parks — particularly along Avebury Boulevard. These will be replaced by multi storey car parking, releasing the land for better use. One of their current criticisms of CMK is (with the notable exception of the Xscape dome) the lack of "landmark" buildings. Their CBX III development is intended to rectify this with buildings of between 8 and 10 storeys in height. These will stand out from existing development, which in general is around 4 storey. In Campbell Park, the intent is to create a vibrant 24 hour community to bring life into the centre. Development will consist, they say, of high quality apartments with live / work spaces. A series of 'green fingers' or 'wildlife corridors' will be created running out from the park in the centre to the neighbouring areas of Conniburrow to the north and Springfield to the south. These corridors are intended not only to allow wildlife movement throughout the park but to encourage people from other areas to come and use it. The other two areas for expansion are still undecided. English Partnerships is currently considering six growth options with varying levels and locations of expansion for the city.

In the shorter term, English Partnerships have created development briefs for the East and West flanks call for high density development well away from the centre, without any grid roads and with restricted — relying instead on public transport. At Oakgrove (near Middleton ), they propose to divert and funnel one of the existing grid roads through the heart of the community and build over the space vacated, including the green routes on either side of it. The Parks Trust (who own the land) are deeply opposed to this proposal and declare that they will not release it without a Compulsory Purchase Order .

As might be anticipated, these plans are controversial — especially since the local population has little democratic control over the plans and actions of this Government-appointed Quango .


Culture


Milton Keynes has a 1,400 seat theatre/concert hall {Link without Title} (Blonski-Heard, 1999), whose high booking rate allows it to lay claim to the title "Britain's most popular theatre". The theatre has a 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, Leadenhall, Shenley, Stantonbury and Walton.

Apart from the building itself (exterior surface by Michael Craig-Martin ), the Milton Keynes Gallery[http://www.mk-g.org (next to the main theatre) does not have a permanent collection. This allows it to host edgy shows to critical acclaim.

In , Blues , Folk , Rock , Classical , Pop and world music. It is closely associated with jazz artists Cleo Laine and John Dankworth . The venue also hosts an annual Summer Camp for young musicians.

Near Loughton and Furzton, the open air National Bowl is a 65,000 "seat" venue for large scale rock (and classical) concerts. The Main Article lists many of the famous bands to have played there, and lists DVD recordings of their performances.

Another music venue, very popular with teenagers, is The Pitz in the Woughton Centre , Leadenhall. It usually features a mixture of Punk , Alternative Rock , and Heavy Metal .

There are two Museum s, the Bletchley Park museum of wartime cryptography, and the Milton Keynes Museum , which includes the Stacey Hill Collection of rural life that existed before the foundation of the new city.


Education

The city is home to the Open University , though the only students resident on campus are approximately 200 Postgraduate s. The majority of Open University students are distance learners. It is the largest academic institution in the UK with 180,000 students.

Cranfield University , another postgraduate school, is located just outside the city, in Cranfield .

Milton Keynes College provides Further Education to Foundation Degree level.

Primary , Middle , Secondary and special schools in Milton Keynes are connected to the Internet through a mixed wired and wireless Broadband network, known as MKSchools.net that serves over 25,000 pupils in 90 schools (listed on the MKSchools.net site and also in an older listing with links to many schools on the UK SchoolsWebDirectory .


Media

  • Radio: Milton Keynes is served by three local radio stations.

  • --- BBC Three Counties Radio - Covers Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire , including Milton Keynes and Luton. The station has offices in Milton Keynes at Willen.

  • --- FM 103 Horizon (103.3 FM) - Based at Crownhill this is a local commercial radio station playing mainly chart music and reporting on local news and sport.

  • --- Milton Keynes Hospital Radio Service - Laying claim to being Milton Keynes' first local radio station, MKHRS have been broadcasting via hard-wired connections to patients in Milton Keynes General Hospital since December 1984.

  • Print: Milton Keynes has several local newspapers and local lifestyle magazines.

  • --- Milton Keynes Citizen - The main newspaper of Milton Keynes, with offices in Central Milton Keynes. The paper has local news, sport and an extensive property section

  • --- MK News - Smaller newspaper mainly focused on local news.

  • ---Style MK - Lifestyle magazine covering the cultural life of the city. Frequently has articles about Milton Keynes Gallery and Theatre. The magazine is a glossy publication largely aimed at afluent young professionals.



Sport

See Also: Sport in Milton Keynes


Milton Keynes has professional teams in Football ( Milton Keynes Dons F.C. ), Ice Hockey ( Milton Keynes Lightning ) and in Basketball ( Milton Keynes Lions ). It is represented at amateur level in many sports, some at national level. For details see Sport In Milton Keynes .




Other Amenities

  • Milton Keynes has a 200km network of long distance path does the same.


  • Central Milton Keynes has an important regional retail centre. It includes Middleton Hall that plays host to exhibitions, fairs and displays throughout the year.



  • The city is an important venue for street plaza remain very popular.






  • Nearby, the Xscape Dome includes Britain's first indoor snow slope, a multiplex Cinema , sky-diving simulator and sports-related retail outlets.



  • More than one million visitors come to Willen Lakeside Park each year to play, picnic, take part in Watersports , Jog , attend events or simply relax and watch the world go by. It is a walk of approximately 1.75 miles around the South Lake.



Pre-history: the original towns and villages

The historical settlements have been focal points for the modern development of the new city. Every grid square has historical antecedents, if only in the field names. The more obvious ones are listed below and most have more detailed articles. ''(See footnote for pronunciations of names.)''

  • At Bancroft, the foundations of a Romano-British farm are to be seen in what is now the North Loughton Park, overlooking the Shenley Brook. The brook valley here is part of the Flood Control System and there is a permanent wetland with associated plants and wild-life. The famous Concrete Cows are at the southern end of the park.


broke a large number of Axis codes and ciphers, including the German Enigma Machine .]]


  • The Benedictine Priory at Bradwell was of major economic importance in this area of North Buckinghamshire before the Dissolution Of The Monasteries . The routes of the medieval trackways converge on the site from some distance (many of which are now Redways or bridleways). Nowadays, there is only a small medieval chapel and a manor house occupying the site.


  • New Bradwell , to the north of the medieval Bradwell (Abbey) and just across the canal and the railway to the east of Wolverton, was built specifically for railway workers. It has a working Windmill . The level bed of the old tramway from Newport Pagnell to Wolverton ends here and has been converted to a redway, making it a favourite route for cycling.





  • The name Fenny Stratford is an Anglo Saxon expression meaning "marshy Ford on a Roman road". The Roman Road in this case is the Watling Street . There are traces of the Roman settlement '''''Magiovinium''''' on the edge of the present day occupation. The town grew in the canal era, when the Grand Union Canal came through. With the coming of the Railway , Fenny declined and was swept up by its neighbour, Bletchley that was growing to be an important railway town.




  • The present day name of Loughton is Anglo Saxon, meaning 'Luhha's estate'. In the Domesday Book of 1086 the village was recorded as Lochintone. The village is in the linear park and hosts the '''National Badminton training centre''' and a major equestrian facility.


  • Milton Keynes Village is the original village to which the New City owes its name. The original village is still evident, with a pleasant manor house, is here.


  • The Shenley Villages are on the west side of Watling Street opposite Loughton and were originally part of the larger settlement recorded in the Domesday Book as ''Senelai''. In Shenley Church End, there are the earthworks of a Motte And Bailey castle ("Shenley Toot") and its surrounding village.





  • There has been a market in '''.


  • Just a few farm houses, a moat and a church {Link without Title} (1540) remain of historical Tattenhoe village and Manor — it was largely deserted in the 16th century. Nearby and just outside the city boundary, the foundations of the Benedictine Priory at Snelshall can still be seen.




  • The tiny Parish Church ( here, to capure Flash Flood s before they cause problems down stream on the River Great Ouse . The north basin is a wild-life sanctuary and a favourite of migrating acquatic birds. The south basin is for leisure use, favoured by wind surfers and dinghy sailors. The circuit of the lakes is a favoured "fun run".



  • The twin villages of ''' of their wages and retains many original features.


  • In the Domesday Book , Woughton On The Green was recorded as Ulchetone, an Anglo Saxon name meaning Eoca's Farm. Over the years, the pronunciation altered to "Wufton" and later spelt Woughton. "On the Green" refers to the traditional village green in the centre of the village. The Grand Union Canal runs alongside.



Milton Keynes in popular culture


Miscellanea

  • The city's road system, with its abundance of route passes through 13 roundabouts in a 10.7 km stretch, and the A509 route passes through 12 roundabouts in a 6.4 km stretch. A book called ''Milton Keynes Roundabouts'' led to further editions for other towns.

  • Although the grid roads have conventional names such as Portway and Saxon Street, their original planning designations have stuck and locals are more comfortable with the shorthand "H5" and "V7" (where V is vertical or north/south and H is horizontal or east/west). The Vs are Streets and the Hs are Ways.

  • The road that goes through the city centre, Midsummer Boulevard, is named because it is aligned so that the sun shines directly along it on midsummer each year.

  • The courtyard area of the city train station which displays a Steam Engine (a replica London and North Western Railways' "Bloomer") is widely regarded as one of the best places to skateboard in Europe. Due to the arrangement of the pavements, skateboards can move freely and it has plenty of places to attempt "Grinds" and other Skateboarding Trick s. However in recent years, the Council has disliked the skateboarders' use of this area and has since built a skate park called Station Square across the street under the Bus station. (See Amenities above).

  • Marshall Amplifiers and speakers, much loved by rock and Heavy Metal bands, is based in Bletchley . It produced the amplifier with a volume dial that Went Up To 11 , for the spoof 'rockumentary' '' This Is Spinal Tap ''.

  • In the film Love Actually one of the background people learning to speak English says the line "Milton Keynes has many roundabouts".

  • Milton Keynes provided locations for the films "".

  • Denbigh North Leisure (just north of Bletchley) was home to the Sanctuary Music Arena , a music venue that was pivotal in the development of the UK 's dance music scene. It was demolished in 2004 to make way for the Milton Keynes Football Stadium and retail development.



Writers, artists and celebrities

  • Many artists have played at the National Bowl, Milton Keynes and some have released DVD or audio recordings. See That Article for detailed list.

  • Milton Keynes also appears in book Web Site Story.

  • The British Comedian Bill Bailey makes reference to Milton Keynes in his stand up show Part Troll, calling the city ''Satan's lay-by''.

  • The humourist Miles Kington once had a book cover cartoon with the caption "Miles Kington? I thought that was one of these dreadful new towns" — not simply an observation that his name resembles a place name, but almost certainly also a reference to Milton Keynes.

  • The UK TV and radio personality Noel Edmonds is credited with tainting the image of Milton Keynes in the 1970s by repeatedly deriding it as a concrete jungle and the natural home of the famous Concrete Cows . The Development Corporation was quick to point out that Milton Keynes has over 20 million trees. The Concrete Cows are among the earliest examples of Conceptual Art .

  • Milton Keynes is parodied as ''Milton Springsteen: It's Quite Nice, Really!'' in Alexei Sayle 's book ''Train To Hell''. Rather than concrete cows, Milton Springsteen features "android yokels."

  • The Travel Writer Bill Bryson also features Milton Keynes in his book ''Notes From A Small Island'', in which he gets lost in the pedestrian subway system, the Redways , having decided not to ask for directions.

  • Milton Keynes is the birthplace of .

  • Contrary to (allegedly) popular misconception, Milton Keynes was not named after the poet John Milton nor the economists Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes (indeed "Keynes" in the latter is pronounced "kay", not "key"), but after a village of the same name that already existed on the site of the proposed New City. The suffix 'village' was added creating the name Milton Keynes Village in 1991 , to distinguish it from the larger city. The name Milton Keynes and its similarity to the names of the famous economists Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes has often led to various silly jokes. Once on the television show Yes, Prime Minister , when the PM Jim Hacker mentioned Milton Keynes, the person to whom he was speaking mentioned how Milton Keynes was an economist and the intellectual leader of the ''Freedmen''.

  • Recently the city itself became the subject for a series of works by locally born artist Mike Pinches. Pinches captures unusual, contradictory and bizarre images from the urban landscape of Milton Keynes. View his work here {Link without Title}

  • Milton Keynes is home to the Ska-Punk group Capdown who are set to tour with Hundred Reasons and Fallout Boy in 2006. See a bio on Capdown here. {Link without Title}





Access


  • By Road:

  • ---North/South

  • -- M1 Northbound: J14 for central and northern areas, J13 for southern areas (Open University and Bletchley).

  • --M1 Southbound: J15A (via A45 then A5) for north side (Stony Stratford and Wolverton); J14 for Central Milton Keynes and south side.

  • --Also A5 ( Watling Street ) and A509 .

  • ---East/West

  • -- A421 (centre and south), A421 (north).

  • ---Many long-distance coaches (including National Express services from London Victoria Coach Station and Golders Green Bus Station) stop at the rather desolate Milton Keynes Coachway beside M1 Junction 14, near a Park And Ride car park, about three miles (5 km) from the centre (3.5 miles from MK Central station). Stagecoach operates a coach service (X5) running west to east (Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Cambridge). This service calls at MK Central railway station, Central MK and the Coachway. For connecting bus services, see MKWEB .


  • By Bicycle: Milton Keynes Is Served By routes 6 and 51 on the National Cycle Network . Cycle storage can be found along route 51 at Milton Keynes Central railway station (covered cycle racks) and at the junction of Midsummer Boulevard and Witan Gate, where there are storage and changing facilities available.



  • By Water: the Grand Union Canal (London/Birmingham) provides a major axis in the design of Milton Keynes.



External links



Footnotes


Pronunciation varies according to the speaker. The Received Pronunciation of Milton Keynes is , of Shenley is , of Loughton is , of Woughton is , and of Broughton is . Note how there is an example of each of the three Phone s in English for ''"ough"''.