Milton Keynes: failed experiment or city of the future?

Milton Keynes is one of the UK’s weirdest, and most controversial cities. Its grid layout and car-centric construction is often mocked, but is it all bad?

Milton keing might just be the weirdest city in the UK it’s known nationally for its weird layout and is often the butt of jokes even East Enders is poke fun at the city recently with a scene depicting it as something of a slum which prompted the MP to get involved it was created as part of the post World War II New Towns act as an attempt to build a future prooof city that would have space to grow and expand and wouldn’t deal with congestion issues as many cities had begun to it’s known for its wide straight roads roundabouts and car Centric infrastructure but why is it so weird and why some people hate it so much let’s find out I’ve just arrived and it’s already clear to me that this place is something different there’s a strange linearity about the place it all seems to be straight road roundabout and another straight road the first thing that strikes you has to be that grid structure the city is made up of 11 vertical roads and 10 horizontal ones like this where they meet roughly every kilometer there’s a roundabout this forms a grid structure the use of roundabouts here was a deliberate one when the city was being constructed traffic and congestion were becoming major problems in older cities when they came to design Milton keing traffic flow was a top priority by using roundabouts traffic lights are eliminated enabling a faster flow of traffic it’s not hard to see why roundabout is much better at keeping traffic flowing through a junction just think of all the time you’ve wasted stopped at a red light while no cars are coming the other way the use of these straight roads in a grid also enables higher speed limit which keeps traffic moving faster a grid also spreads out the traffic load over multiple different roads instead of using one road from east to west or one road from north to south it’s spread out across multiple obviously these roads aren’t very pleasant to walk along but that’s not their purpose the roads that make up the one km grid are simply there to enable fast movement between different parts of the city within these squares however there is a smaller network of roads that make up an even smaller grid the whole city is almost like a series of Russian dolls take this street for example it’s residential with houses up both sides yet it’s a completely straight road complete with a roundabout but what’s it like to get about the city is a pedestrian once you get out of the car first things first let’s park the car well that wasn’t very hard the city has thousands upon thousands of car parking spaces spread across countless car Parks you’d expect that given how much you’re incentivize to drive here these main roads with their multiple lanes and fast moving traffic are obviously not great to walk on as any Milton keen’s hater will keenly tell you but the city has something of a secret that few Outsiders know about these weaved in between the city’s main grid is a network of over 170 m of Road wait not Road these are paths for cyclists and pedestrians cars aren’t welcome here these paths are all well and good for getting around but what about the High Street what’s that like as a pedestrian this is where things get really interesting where most towns and cities have a high Street or a series of streets with most of their shops and amenities on Milton keing is different most of the Town Center amenities are located in a large shopping center called Center MK this is the UK’s 17th largest shopping center by area which makes it to be a little less than half the size of London’s Westfield with over 170 shops it certainly got more options than most high streets but don’t be fooled this wasn’t created to give pedestrians a safe space away from Cars it was created to give drivers a place to park after all have you ever been to a High Street with over 1,400 car park spaces believe it or not this is actually a grade two listed building and being in Milton King it’s obviously laid out in a grid even the faia has grid squares on it an indoor High Street is certainly something quite different but is it really a bad thing after all the center has lots of natural light and plenty of greenery throughout doesn’t this all feel a little bit artificial though this seems to be the exact problem most people have with Milt and kees instead of a High Street there’s a building with plants to make it feel like it’s outside all the roads are straight and linear and even this lake is fake it was built in the 1970s to control water flow into the river oel all this Lake and park is is a byproduct of a flood defense so yeah it’s a bit artificial but does this really matter after all the city’s easy to navigate has over 170 m of cycle paths and has plenty of room for future expansion you can even shop on the High Street without getting wet and while it might not be the most attractive City for people there’s clearly something that’s attracting businesses here big high street names such as Argos Domino’s and Sainsbury’s all have their head Offices here and those are only the small names the Volkswagen Group which is by some metrics the world’s largest automaker didn’t choose Birmingham or Manchester or even London for their UK headquarters they chose Milton kees though Milton kees is popular with big business it’s also popular with entrepreneurs 62.3 businesses per 10,000 people are registered here while the average for the rest of the country is just 54.3 per ,000 with a skilled Workforce plenty of space and a location that’s exactly halfway between London and Birmingham which was no accident it’s no wonder to see why businesses love Milton Kings so to answer my question from the beginning of the video Milton ke is weird because it’s built with a completely different set of rules in mind while most cities have evolved over the centuries to accommodate people Milton keing was built from the start with expansion in mind was built with plenty of space for people and most importantly their cars it was effectively built backwards as the space was there before the people were it was certainly an attempt at building the city of the future but it seems it was a future that didn’t happen get me out of here