Milton Keynes was used to insults but this week the taunts irked more than ever. The city became the center of attention EastEnders It published a story about Bianca Jackson, played by Patsy Palmer, who lives on a Milton Keynes council estate.
The city is portrayed in a less than positive light. A young girl involved in drug dealing is seen collecting food in trash cans. Bianca throws a brick through the window. The Oik youths lurk menacingly. Walford is like Henley-on-Thames in comparison.
It would not be wrong to say that the Milton Keynesians were not very pleased. Residents said their hometown was depicted as a “slum”, while Ben Everitt, the local MP for Milton Keynes North, complained that it looked “ruined and miserable”. Locals were quick to point out that the scenes were not even filmed in Milton Keynes; The council estate is actually 45 miles away in Barnet, North London.
The vilification of Milton Keynes is nothing new. When you play the word association game with the next person you see, you will almost certainly come across “Milton Keynes”: “roundabouts”, “shopping” or – if you are lucky – “that indoor ski slope”. Does it deserve better? I paid a visit to see if I could find traces of culture and society in the midst of comfort and concrete.
A utopian vision of society
Founded in 1967, Milton Keynes was part of England’s second wave of new towns designed to rid London of its ever-expanding population. They pursued a utopian vision of how people could live without being on top of each other: a “community without proximity,” as American urban designer Melvin Webber put it. If the population of London were distributed in this way, it would cover the whole of East Anglia.
But unlike the wicker hedge and mowed lawn aesthetic of previous projects such as Welwyn Garden City (1920), Milton Keynes was designed in a more brutally pragmatic way: a unique grid pattern of roads, spaced 1km apart, routed around a shopping centre. It was once the tallest center in the universe.
After parking, I had a hard time understanding the geography of the city, so I decided to look for some altitude. Two years ago this would have been impossible, but the opening of a new “skyscraper” changed everything.
In any case, the Fourteen Skyline Bar and Restaurant on the top floor of La Tour Hotel should not exist. Milton Keynes’s early urban designers envisioned a city hidden among trees (there are 22 million of them today) and decided that no building should be taller than the tallest tree. However, citing the need for new investment and landmark buildings, the local council appears to have relaxed this rule (or perhaps simply amended the maxim to include California redwoods).
“When we built it and came here we said: ‘Oh my God, the view is amazing,’” says La Tour General Manager Mark Stuart. Even during my foggy visit, I could feel the panorama. In the west, the plan for Milton Keynes falls into focus. I’ve seen toy cars move sensibly down tree-lined boulevards (center streets are labeled H for Horizontal or V for Vertical). You can see why self-driving car companies and robot delivery companies are testing their products in Milton Keynes.
To the east – the view facing the tables with white tablecloths – a shock of green replaces gray in Campbell Park, Gulliver’s World, Lake Willen and beyond. On a clear day you can see up to 30 miles away.
In the foreground I saw a sculpture called the Pyramid of Light, which, with its sparse green surroundings, looked like, say, a Soviet monument in a provincial town in Uzbekistan. But it’s actually a sculpture that shows the city’s unexpected connection with the universe. Midsummer Boulevard, the main street along which the statue is aligned, was designed so that the sun would rise at one end and set at the other on the summer solstice. To this day, the city attracts the attention of druids and leyline hunters. Some (but no one I met) even went so far as to call Milton Keynes the “Modern Temple of the Sun”.
La Tour is primarily a business hotel, but Stuart says the restaurant and cocktail bar is proving hugely popular with people in the area: tables are fully booked for the next four weekends. Decision? On my way out, the two ladies I met in the elevator said they stopped by for tea.
“It was beautiful,” said one. This was his first visit. I asked where they went next? “Shopping.”
A gallery worthy of Zone One
So I planned to take a tour around the mall, but first I went through a concrete underpass and visited the MK Gallery.
If there is a cultural district in Milton Keynes, this is it. On the same plot there is a cinema (a joint venture with Curzon) and a neighboring theater that hosts West End shows. At the time of my visit, the gallery was hosting an excellent exhibition by photographer Saul Leiter, but the building itself is just as fascinating. Its architecture, held vertically with yellow and red painted beams, was modeled on the original architectural department building for which the city was designed. Those who deride Milton Keynes as “boring” may not realize that young Norman Foster and Terence Conran were involved in the city’s early development.
“We’re here to remind you that the heyday of Milton Keynes was very progressive and international in its outlook,” gallery director Anthony Spira told me, noting that the city was born from the same idea that created the Pompidou. Its headquarters is in Paris. He said many of Milton Keynes’ big plans were being jeopardized simply by budget cuts.
This, he thinks, is why Milton Keynes has gained a reputation. But there could also be another reason.
“I think Britain in general is quite afraid of the modern,” he said. “We prefer medieval villages with cobbled streets and scattered market towns. “Too rational for the English mind.”
A very long shopping mall
What is particularly un-English about Milton Keynes is the lack of a discernible ‘high street’. In fact, the closest thing is the mall itself, which entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1997 as the world’s tallest at 720 meters (today it is tiny compared to the giants of the Middle East and China).
Even someone like me who is staunchly opposed to shopping has to admit that the building has aged quite well, with a naturally lit main walkway dotted with palm trees and lounge areas with comfortable chairs. It feels like a high-functioning airport terminal, but instead of flying into Hong Kong, passengers are trying to find the nearest H&M. There is history there too. The blue plaques on the wall reflect the mall’s claim to fame; This includes the video for Cliff Richard’s 1981 song: Wired for AudioIt was shot here.
I found the market outside the mall (open Tues and Thurs-Sun). Jason, who runs Wok Express with his father, has had a stall here for 22 years. Is there a lot of community, I asked? “It doesn’t matter. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been here this long,” he said, but noted that rising rental prices were a challenge. The market was busy enough on Thursday; the fruit and vegetable stall was more popular than an empty toy stall; there was an AK47 for sale there (suitable for ages 8+ ) I saw.
Milton Keynes was asking me to buy something, but all I really wanted at that point was a good coffee. After a long search, in an area of the city called The Hub, I found this independent Bogota Coffee Company.
“The turning point was when my pergola took off over Berkhamsted High Street,” said Carl Meek, who opened Bogota with a friend in 2012. “We chose Milton Keynes because we felt it was coming and a lot was going to happen here.” They also hold late-night sessions with DJs and live music, and he said a wide range of customers come, as well as commuters and business people.
“It is now one of the fastest growing cities in Europe; We have a very diverse international crowd here. During the summer months, we receive tons of customers from Dubai, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. “They all have second homes in Milton Keynes and they love it,” he said.
I can understand why. There’s a touch of the Middle East to Milton Keynes, as it’s surrounded by a huge shopping mall and sky-falling attractions like SnoZone. But it also reminded me of Los Angeles, with how it asks visitors to dig around to find the good stuff and how it’s built around the car so brazenly and shamelessly.
Decision? If EastEnders I wanted to make fun of Milton Keynes but it missed the mark. But still, to joke about the city’s crossroads or soullessness is to miss the original, curious utopian vision behind the city. Milton Keynes is a paradox, an enigma, a national oddity, and the person who sums it up best is Anthony Spira of MK Gallery.
“This is very, very un-British,” he said. “And that’s what makes it remarkable.”