Silbury Boulevard and Witan Gate, CMKNo building taller than the tallest tree was integral to the Plan for Milton Keynes... This was abolished not long after the Xscape opened.  A'int got no soul So they say.
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Maybe you can't have soul until you have traffic jams like most UK towns and cities? The thing with CMK is that it's huge, much bigger than the average town centre, and certainly bigger than many city centres which means it is more spread out. As time is going by things are getting better with leisure facilities springing up in between the gaps of offices etc. A lot of comment seems to wax lyrically about how it is all magically better in other towns and cities but the reality is that when people say that MK peeps don't associate due to the motor car's dominance, that isn't just MK in its microcosm, it's the UK in general. People's lives are much more privatised now in towns and cities. But for all this, and it's not perfect, I actually really like Central Milton Keynes, not all the buildings are perfect (god knows enough where put up in the 'Bovisville' 80s) but the spread out nature, the trees, the segregation of pedestrian and motorised traffic and layout is great. Also, notice that CMK is far from on the flat (it's on the highest point in the new-town designated area, where the Saxon moot mount used to be...) Leica M2, Voigtlander Ultron 35mm, Kodachrome 64 - May 2009 Comments
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Finding location...
Vicky Lamburn
says:
A few people sometimes question why the shopping building (Ok ok ok, the centre:mk...) was sited at the very top (eastern flank) of CMK whilst the station was sited at the very bottom (western flank) -- the station is easy, it's where the mainline railway is. But, work was advanced on getting BR to build the station in the mid-late 70s anyway as was the beginnings of the shopping building.
So the big gap was 'planned', but why?
Quango hunts. Sorry Mr Cameron but Quango hunts are nothing new, but still very popular with voters. Milton Keynes Development Corporation like many new town DC's were worried about the noises coming out of Whitehall under the Heath government that Quangos would have to justify themselves or be put to the sword. Things didn't get much better under Wilson's second tenure, or Callaghan's or indeed Thatcher.
But it was under the Heath government that MKDC was seriously concerned that 'socialist new town development corporations' were under the biggest threat. So what to do?
The shopping building was purposely located at the opposite end of CMK creating a massive gap in between, and you can't just leave a massive gap between a station and the shopping centre empty because the DC was wound up, can you? And that's why they did it, to force the hand of Government not to shut down MKDC prematurely.
Ironucally on two counts, the government later signalled particularly under Thatcher that DC's were not part of the Quango hunt, and perhaps even more ironic is that for Thatcher, 'socialist new town' MK became a massive poster-child for UK enterprise, Plc and indeed Thatcherite 80s Britain....
Posted 4 months ago. ( permalink )