One of the things which makes London different from other great European capitals, such as Paris, is the fact that like most British cities, London grew up over many centuries in response to local needs and without any central planning. As a result there are none of the imposing boulevards and gracious avenues of Paris, or even  Madrid  or  Milan;  London  is  a  chaotic  city  with  roads and streets that are winding and illogically organized. But in 1967, the government in London took a decision to build a totally new, planned city for at least some Londoners, about fifty miles to the north of London, almost halfway to Britain’s second city, Birmingham. This town was to be called Milton Keynes.

The 1960s was a period of great prosperity and rapid growth in Britain. Many parts of the old central areas of the bigger cities of Britain were overcrowded and short of facilities. The government therefore decided to knock down many of the old houses in these parts and redevelop the areas, providing new entertainment facilities, new industrial premise, new roads and housing. But to do this they needed to move thousands of people out of the city centres. The government planned to build homes and facilities for about 150,000 Londoners in Milton Keynes.

For town planners in the UK, this was an exciting time.

They were able to use their imagination to plan a complete new city on an area of 9,000 hectares that was mainly agricultural land. The new town was to be on the A5, the main road linking London with central and north-west England and north Wales. The planners decided to develop a traffic system that would avoid the busy streets that were normal in British towns, especially during the rush hour periods when people went to and from work.

This was to be done by planning a grid system of dual carriageway roads that ran parallel or at right angles to each other. There would be 1,800 hectares of parks (about 20% of the city’s area), fifteen lakes and eleven miles of canals.

Has the planned city been a success? The answer is, in some ways, certainly, yes. As a result of being a planned city, Milton Keynes is now, fifty years later, free of the traffic problems that other British towns suffer. Half of the people who work in Milton Keynes have to travel only three miles to work. Many international companies have established a base in Milton Keynes, and the proportion of people without work is at a level of 5.5%, instead of the overall British level of around 6%. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of leisure facilities, clubs and organizations, serving such activities as sailing, paragliding and indoor snowboarding, as well as the more common activities such as cinema, theatre, football or cricket. There is a group that spends its time trying to recreate the life of the ancient Vikings, using costumes, weapons, cooking customs and buildings of those past times. The city is a young city, too: the median age of Milton Keynes is 35 as opposed to the national median of 39.

Perhaps the age of the people is significant. It is a lively, young city with plenty of work and plenty of leisure activities. Gordon Heatherwick is the manager of a travel agency and moved to Milton Keynes five years ago. He’s 35, and he says, “I’ve moved around quite a bit — I’ve lived in America and in Germany, for example. But this is the best place I’ve lived in yet, and it’s especially good from the leisure point of view. There’s a huge amount of entertainment, though I’m too busy to have a lot of time for sport, for example. It’s easy to get around, too — you can get across the town in fifteen minutes if you want to, and London’s only an hour away. Oxford’s fifty minutes away and Birmingham’s only about an hour away. And if you don’t want to drive, you can take the train. But best of all, it’s just a pleasant environment to live in. There’s so much open country nearby, so many parks and lakes, and there aren’t any high buildings blocking you in.”

But is it a good place for an older person? Mrs Goodall, of Bletchley, is now 62 years old, and she has lived through all the changes that have taken place in the area. She says “There’s good and there’s bad. I remember when they grew corn and vegetables on most of the land, and many of us worked on the farms. It wasn’t always an easy life, but it was somehow calmer. There wasn’t so much traffic of course, but that’s something that’s happened all over the country, not just round here — there must be millions of cars more than there used to be. A lot depends on how much you earn, doesn’t it? Our family have never had a car, for example, and this town is really built for cars, so if you haven’t got one you’ve either got to find someone who’s going your way, to take you in their car, or you’ve got to wait for a bus, and there aren’t many of them. Or you can use a bike. Now that’s something that’s improved a lot since the early days — there are any number of cycle tracks these days. They say you can even go to London or Scarborough by bicycle now, almost without going on the road. But I’m getting too old to go by bike now, especially in the winter, so as I get older I’ve got less and less chance of getting out and about. But I don’t really want to any more. Give me a warm fire and a television and I’m happy.

So Mrs Goodall seems generally happy, even as an older person without a car, though it’s clear that transport is less easy for those who can’t afford a private car. Certainly Milton Keynes is the right place for some people, though there are others who would never consider going there to live. 

The local council that runs Milton Keynes tries to remind people that, although it’s a new town, there is plenty of history behind it. In Caldecotte Lake, for example, excavators discovered the skeleton of a dinosaur, a 150 million-year-old ichthyosaurus, and there are remains from ancient settlements as long ago as 6000 BC. The Romans were there, too, and there are the remains of a Roman Villa with beautiful mosaic floors.

The council’s website lists other interesting facts about the town. It had the first active solar house, it was the location for some of the central scenes of the film Superman 4, and the world’s first operational computer was developed in Milton Keynes. It is ranked in the top three cities for business start-ups in the UK. And it has a street called “Midsummer Boulevard where the sun rises at one end and sets at the other end only on Midsummer’s Day. But all these  oddities raise just one question: are all these odd facts important to Milton Keynes because in spite of its advantages, it really hasn’t got much character as a town?