On The Road with Vicky Lamburn

Impression Milton Keynes

This is an exclusive sneak peak preview of the preface to the book. This work is actively under revision and will probably not represent the final wording of the book’s preface. All content here is strictly Copyright ©2009 Victoria JK Lamburn and may not be redistributed in any form away from this page without explicit prior consent.

Preface

Milton Keynes, a name guaranteed to at least elicit a comment from anyone in the UK. They might not say much, but they will already have an impression of the city. From concrete cows, concrete jungle, roundabouts and soulless – a lot of people have an impression of Milton Keynes. The only caveat seems to be that so many have never set foot in the city and many more have been to the city centre but never ventured further. Maybe some of those less than complimentary comments are understandable if they have never been or only witnessed a small part of the entire city.

Let us get it out of the way now: I like Milton Keynes. In fact I love the place; if I did not then it would be hard to have connection with the subject and a reason even to embark on photographing it. I am not entirely blinkered though, there are problems and the only way to deal with these is to admit them and face them head on even if they do show one of your favourite places in a less than favourable light.

What is Milton Keynes?

It is a new town that was designated in 1967 with construction starting in 1970. It is now a city with a population of 235,000. It is the only city to be designed around a grid road system more commonly found in the United States. It is first a foremost a garden city with low density development and is suburban in character. It subsumed three previous townships of Bletchley, Stony Stratford and Wolverton into itself and numerous smaller villages including Milton Keynes village itself from where the city takes its name. Out of all the new towns that were built in Britain, it is widely celebrated as the most successful of the entire programme.

It is also worth noting that it is not even a city yet but it was designated to be one and virtually everyone refers to it as a city.

Why the disparaging comments?

Everyone is entitled to an opinion fundamentally.

However, the city centre is vastly different to all UK city centres with its low density and unabashed modernist architecture and rigid grid system. This is very distinctive, there is a lot of hard standing (read: car parking) and it’s entirely un-British. It is the opposite of the English rural idyll despite being incredibly green with its tree lined boulevards.

The city is full of roundabouts, a common source of derision. Traffic congestion is minimal compared to most UK towns in many parts thanks to the roundabouts. Without them there might be more traffic congestion, which would also be a point to complain about… The grid roads are heavily landscaped so you cannot easily see the houses and development beyond grid road corridors which some cite as bland. They might be right but some corridors are future proofed for mass transit systems like tram-lines and widening; and It does cut down the road noise for people living in the vicinity of grid roads.

Concrete cows tie into the concrete jungle remark. The impression of Milton Keynes is sometimes of a vast concretised landscape and to have livestock that is made of concrete only compounds to mock that reputation. The truth though is that what public art do many towns have in the UK that are as well known as Milton Keynes’ concrete cows; and on the second count, it’s not nearly as concreted over as you may imagine.

These rebuttals may not change your mind, this is after all my impression of Milton Keynes, but the photographs may open your eyes up a little and further the debate on one of the most talked about examples of large scale development in England.

The future

Milton Keynes is changing with new development in the eastern and western flanks of the city beyond the original approved city boundaries (although more or less within the original proposals that were dropped by 1967.) These new areas are set to be developed differently with grid roads not being carried through. This is a fundamental shift for Milton Keynes and an unpopular one with its residents. The city is changing, just as the city changed North Buckinghamshire forty years ago. For me it was important to capture the city before it changes as it looks towards the next forty years.

Victoria JK Lamburn
April 2009