In praise of Milton Keynes

Who would ever have thought it, but I have become quite fond of Milton Keynes. Although I live slightly closer to the ancient city of Northampton than to this widely mocked ‘new town’ of the 1960s, I definitely prefer the latter. Northampton is a fine example of the ruination of an English market town by misguided post-war planners; Milton Keynes an example of the fulfilment of their utopian dreams. It is no utopia, of course. With its dual carriageways called ‘boulevards’ (lined with trees still looking as if they will never outgrow the sapling appearance they had in the architects’ drawings), its notorious proliferation of roundabouts, and its bland low-rise office blocks (no building in Milton Keynes is supposed to be taller than its tallest tree), it still feels somehow unreal, as if the planners’ vision of it had never fully materialised.

But it is now a town twice as big as Oxford or Cambridge, full of vitality, and boasting an improbable degree of pride and contentment among its residents.