In the 1960s, the government decided that a further generation of
new towns in the
South East of England was needed to relieve housing congestion in London. Milton Keynes, was to be the biggest yet, with a population of 250,000 and area of 22,000 acres (9,000 ha). At designation, its area incorporated the existing towns of
Bletchley,
Fenny Stratford,
Wolverton and
Stony Stratford,[d] along with another fifteen villages and farmland in between. These settlements had an extensive historical record since the
Norman conquest; detailed archaeological investigations before development revealed evidence of human occupation from the
Neolithic period, including the
Milton Keynes Hoard of
Bronze Age gold jewellery. The government established
Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) to design and deliver this new city. The Corporation decided on a softer, more human-scaled landscape than in the earlier English new towns but with an emphatically
modernist architecture. Recognising how traditional towns and cities had become choked in traffic, they established a grid of distributor roads about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) between edges, leaving the spaces between to develop more organically. An extensive network of
shared paths for leisure cyclists and pedestrians criss-crosses through and between them. Rejecting the residential
tower block concept that had
become unpopular, they set a height limit of three storeys outside
Central Milton Keynes.
Facilities include a 1,400-seat theatre, a municipal art gallery, two multiplex cinemas, an
ecumenical central church, a 400-seat concert hall, a teaching hospital, a 30,500-seat football stadium, an indoor ski-slope and a 65,000-capacity open-air concert venue. Seven railway stations serve the
Milton Keynes urban area (one inter-city). The
Open University is based here and there is a small campus of the
University of Bedfordshire. Most major sports are represented at amateur level;
Red Bull Racing (Formula One),
MK Dons (association football), and
Milton Keynes Lightning (ice hockey) are its professional teams. The
Peace Pagoda overlooking Willen Lake was the first such to be built in Europe. The many works of sculpture in parks and public spaces include the iconic Concrete Cows at
Milton Keynes Museum.
Milton Keynes is among the most economically productive localities in the UK, ranking highly against a number of criteria. It has the UK's fifth-highest number of business startups per capita (but equally of business failures). It is home to several major national and international companies. Despite economic success and personal wealth for some, there are pockets of nationally significant poverty. The employment profile is composed of about 90% service industries and 9% manufacturing.
It may startle some political economists to talk of commencing the building of new cities ... planned as cities from their first foundation, and not mere small towns and villages. ... A time will arrive when something of this sort must be done ... England cannot escape from the alternative of new city building.
In the 1960s, the UK government decided that a further generation of
new towns in the
South East of England was needed to relieve housing congestion in London.[9] Since the 1950s,
overspill housing for several
London boroughs had been constructed in
Bletchley.[10][11][12] Further studies[9][13] in the 1960s identified north Buckinghamshire as a possible site for a large new town, a new city,[14][e] encompassing the existing towns of Bletchley,
Stony Stratford, and
Wolverton.[15] The New Town (informally and in planning documents, 'New City') was to be the biggest yet, with a target population of 250,000,[16][17] in a '
designated area' of 21,883 acres (8,855.7 ha).[1] The name 'Milton Keynes' was taken from that of
an existing village on the site.[18]
On 23 January 1967, when the formal "new town designation order" was made,[1] the area to be developed was largely farmland and undeveloped villages. The site was deliberately located equidistant from London,
Birmingham,
Leicester,
Oxford, and
Cambridge,[19][20] with the intention that it would be self-sustaining and eventually become a major
regional centre in its own right.[9] Planning control was taken from elected
local authorities and delegated to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC). Before construction began, every area was subject to detailed archaeological investigation: doing so has exposed
a rich history of human settlement since Neolithic times and has provided a unique insight into the history of a large sample of the landscape of North Buckinghamshire.[21]
The corporation's strongly
modernist designs were regularly featured in the magazines Architectural Design and the Architects' Journal.[22][23][24] MKDC was determined to learn from the mistakes made in the earlier
new towns,[25][26] and revisit the
garden city ideals.[27][28] They set in place the characteristic
grid roads that run between districts (
'grid squares'), as well as a programme of intensive planting,
balancing lakes and parkland.[29]Central Milton Keynes ("CMK") was not intended to be a traditional
town centre but a
central business and shopping district to supplement local centres embedded in most of the grid squares.[30] This non-hierarchical devolved city plan was a departure from the English new towns tradition and envisaged a wide range of industry and diversity of housing styles and tenures.[31] The largest and almost the last of the British New Towns, Milton Keynes has 'stood the test of time far better than most, and has proved flexible and adaptable'.[32] The radical grid plan was inspired by the work of
Melvin M. Webber,[33] described by the founding architect of Milton Keynes,
Derek Walker, as the 'father of the city'.[34] Webber thought that telecommunications meant that the old idea of a city as a concentric cluster was out of date and that cities which enabled people to travel around them readily would be the thing of the future, achieving "community without
propinquity" for residents.[35]
The government wound up MKDC in 1992, 25 years after the new town was founded, transferring control to the Commission for New Towns (CNT) and then finally to
English Partnerships, with the planning function returning to local council control (since 1974 and the
Local Government Act 1972, Milton Keynes Borough (now City) Council). From 2004 to 2011 a government
quango, the
Milton Keynes Partnership, had development control powers to accelerate the growth of Milton Keynes.[36]
Formal award of city status
Along with many other towns and boroughs, Milton Keynes competed (unsuccessfully) for
formal city status in the 2000, 2002 and 2012 competitions.[37] However the Borough (including rural areas, in addition to the MK urban area[38]) was successful in 2022, in the
Queen's Platinum Jubilee Civic Honours competition. On 15 August 2022, the
Crown Office announced formally that
Queen Elizabeth II had ordained by
letters patent that the Borough of Milton Keynes has been given city status.[39] In law, it is the Borough rather than its eponymous settlement that has city status; nevertheless it is the latter that is more commonly known as the city.[40][41]
The name 'Milton Keynes' was a reuse of the name of one of the original historic villages in the designated area,[42] now more generally known as '
Milton Keynes Village' to distinguish it from the modern settlement. After the Norman conquest, the
de Cahaignes family held the manor from 1166 to the late 13th century as well as others in the country (
Ashton Keynes in Wiltshire,
Somerford Keynes in Gloucestershire, and
Horsted Keynes in West Sussex).[43] The village was originally known as Middeltone (11th century); then later as Middelton Kaynes or Caynes (13th century); Milton Keynes (15th century); and Milton alias Middelton Gaynes (17th century).[43]
Prior history
The area that was to become Milton Keynes encompassed a landscape that has a rich historic legacy. The area to be developed was largely farmland and undeveloped villages, but with evidence of permanent settlement dating back to the
Bronze Age. Before construction began, every area was subject to detailed archaeological investigation: this work has provided an unprecedented[f] insight into the history of a very large sample of the landscape of south-central England. There is evidence of
Stone Age,[44] late
Bronze Age/early
Iron Age,[45]Romano-British,[46][47]Anglo-Saxon,[48]Anglo-Norman,[49]Medieval,[50][48] and late
Industrial Revolution settlements such as the railway towns of
Wolverton (with its
railway works) and
Bletchley (at the junction of the
London and North Western Railway with the Oxford–Cambridge
Varsity Line).[51][52] The most notable archaeological artefact was the
Milton Keynes Hoard, which the British Museum described as 'one of the biggest concentrations of Bronze Age gold known from Britain and seems to flaunt wealth.'[53]
The concepts that heavily influenced the design of Milton Keynes are described in detail in article
urban planning – see 'cells' under
Planning and aesthetics (referring to grid squares). See also article
single-use zoning.
The urban design has not been universally praised. In 1980, the then president of the
Royal Town Planning Institute, Francis Tibbalds, described Central Milton Keynes as "bland, rigid, sterile, and totally boring."[68] Michael Edwards, a member of the original consultancy team,[g] believes that there were weaknesses in their proposal and that the Development Corporation implemented it badly.[69]
Grid roads and grid squares
The geography of Milton Keynes –
the railway line,
Watling Street,
Grand Union Canal,
M1 motorway – sets up a very strong north-south axis. If you've got to build a city between (them), it is very natural to take a pen and draw the rungs of a ladder. Ten miles by six is the size of this city – 22,000 acres. Do you lay it out like an American city, rigid orthogonal from side to side? Being more sensitive in 1966-7, the designers decided that the grid concept should apply but should be a lazy grid following the flow of land, its valleys, its ebbs and flows. That would be nicer to look at, more economical and efficient to build, and would sit more beautifully as a landscape intervention.
The Milton Keynes Development Corporation planned the major road layout according to
street hierarchy principles, using a
grid pattern of approximately 1 km (0.62 mi) intervals, rather than on the more conventional
radial pattern found in older settlements.[71] Major distributor roads run between communities, rather than through them: these distributor roads are known locally as grid roads and the spaces between them – the neighbourhoods – are known as grid squares (though few are actually square or even
rectilinear).[72] This spacing was chosen so that people would always be within six minutes' walking distance of a grid-road bus-stop.[30][h] Consequently, each grid square is a semi-autonomous community, making a unique collective of 100 clearly identifiable neighbourhoods within the overall urban environment.[73][i] The grid squares have a variety of development styles, ranging from conventional urban development and industrial parks to original rural and modern urban and suburban developments. Most grid squares have a local centre, intended as a retail hub, and many have community facilities as well. Each of the original villages is the heart of its own grid-square. Originally intended under the master plan to sit alongside the grid roads,[75] these local centres were mostly in fact built embedded in the communities.[76][69]
Although the 1970 master plan assumed cross-road junctions,[75]roundabout junctions were built at intersections because this type of junction is more efficient at dealing with small to medium volumes. Some major roads are
dual carriageway, the others are
single carriageway. Along one side of each single carriageway grid road, there is usually a (grassed) reservation to permit dualling or additional transport infrastructure at a later date.[j] As of 2018[update], this has been limited to some dualling. The edges of each grid square are landscaped and densely planted – some additionally have
noise attenuation mounds – to minimise traffic noise from the grid road impacting the adjacent grid square. Traffic movements are fast, with relatively little congestion since there are alternative routes to any particular destination other than during peak periods. The
national speed limit applies on the grid roads, although lower
speed limits have been introduced on some stretches to reduce accident rates. Pedestrians rarely need to cross grid roads
at grade, as
underpasses and bridges were specified at frequent places along each stretch of all of the grid roads.[75] In contrast, the later districts planned by
English Partnerships have departed from this model, without a road hierarchy but with conventional junctions with traffic lights and at grade pedestrian crossings.[26][78][k]
There is a separate network (approximately 170 miles (270 km) total length) of
cycle and pedestrian routes – the
redways – that runs through the grid-squares and often runs alongside the grid-road network.[79] This was designed to segregate slow moving cycle and pedestrian traffic from fast moving motor traffic.[74] In practice, it is mainly used for leisure
cycling rather than commuting, perhaps because the cycle routes are shared with pedestrians, cross the grid-roads via bridge or underpass rather than at grade, and because some take meandering scenic routes rather than straight lines. It is so called because it is generally surfaced with red tarmac.[80] The national
Sustrans national cycle network routes
6 and
51 take advantage of this system.[81][82]
Height
The original design guidance declared that commercial building heights in the centre should not exceed six storeys, with a limit of three storeys for houses (elsewhere),[22] paraphrased locally as "no building taller than the tallest tree".[84] In contrast, the
Milton Keynes Partnership, in its
expansion plans for Milton Keynes, believed that
Central Milton Keynes (and elsewhere) needed "landmark buildings" and subsequently lifted the height restriction for the area.[84] As a result, high rise buildings have been built in the central business district.[l]
More recent local plans have protected the existing boulevard framework and set higher standards for architectural excellence.[88][m]
Linear parks
The
flood plains of the
Great Ouse and of its tributaries (the
Ouzel and some brooks) have been protected as
linear parks that run right through Milton Keynes; these were identified as important landscape and flood-management assets from the outset.[91] At 4,100 acres (1,650 ha) – ten times larger than London's
Hyde Park and a third larger than
Richmond Park[92] – the landscape architects realised that the
Royal Parks model would not be appropriate or affordable and drew on their
National Park experience.[92] As Bendixson and Platt (1992) write: "They divided the Ouzel Valley into 'strings, beads and settings'. The 'strings' are well-maintained routes, be they for walking, bicycling or riding; the 'beads' are sports centres, lakeside cafes and other activity areas; the 'settings' are self-managed land-uses such as woods, riding paddocks, a golf course and a farm".[92]
The
Grand Union Canal is another green route (and demonstrates the level geography of the area – there is just one minor lock in its entire 10-mile (16 km) meandering route through from the southern boundary near
Fenny Stratford to the
"Iron Trunk" aqueduct over the Ouse at
Wolverton at its northern boundary). The initial
park system was planned by Peter Youngman (Chief
Landscape Architect),[93] who also developed landscape precepts for all development areas: groups of grid squares were to be planted with different selections of trees and shrubs to give them distinct identities. The detailed planning and landscape design of parks and of the grid roads was evolved under the leadership of Neil Higson,[94] who from 1977 took over from Youngman.[95]
In a national comparison of urban areas by open space available to residents, Milton Keynes ranked highest in the UK.[96] Milton Keynes is unusual in that most of the parks are owned and managed by a charity, the
Milton Keynes Parks Trust rather than the local authority, to ensure that the management of the city's green spaces are largely independent of the council's expenditure priorities.[97]
Forest city concept
The Development Corporation's original design concept aimed for a "forest city" and its foresters planted millions of trees from its own nursery in Newlands in the following years.[34] Parks, lakes and green spaces cover about 25% of Milton Keynes;[98][99] as of 2018[update], there are 22 million trees and shrubs in public open spaces.[100][99] When the Development Corporation was being
wound up, it transferred the major parks, lakes, river-banks and grid-road margins to the
Parks Trust,[101] a
charity which is independent of the municipal authority.[98] MKDC endowed the Parks Trust with a portfolio of commercial properties, the income from which pays for the upkeep of the green spaces.[98] As of 2018[update], approximately 25% of the urban area is parkland or woodland.[102] It includes two
Sites of Special Scientific Interest,
Howe Park Wood and
Oxley Mead.
Campbell Park, a formal park extending east from the business area to the Grand Union Canal, is described in the
Pevsner Architectural Guides as "...the largest and most imaginative park to have been laid out in Britain in the 20th century".[112] The park is
listed (grade 2) by
Historic England,[113]
Bradwell is a traditional rural village with earthworks of a Norman
motte and bailey and parish church.[115] There is a
YHA hostel beside the church.[116]
New Bradwell, to the north of Bradwell and east of Wolverton, was built specifically for railway workers.[115] The level bed of the old
Wolverton to Newport Pagnell Line near here has been converted to a redway, making it a favoured route for cycling.[121] A working
windmill is sited on a hill outside the village.[122]
Milton Keynes (Village) is the original village to which the New Town owes its name.[18] The original village is still evident, with a pleasant
thatchedpub,
village hall, church and traditional housing. The area around the village has reverted to its 11th century name of
Middleton(Middeltone).[125] The oldest surviving domestic building in the area (c. 1300 CE), "perhaps the manor house", is here.[126]
The original
Wolverton was a medieval settlement just north and west of today's town.[52] The
ridge and furrow pattern of agriculture can still be seen in the nearby fields.[133] The 12th century (rebuilt in 1819) 'Church of the Holy Trinity' still stands next to the Norman
motte and bailey site.[52] Modern Wolverton was a 19th-century New Town built to house the workers at the
Wolverton railway works, which built engines and carriages for the
London and North Western Railway.[52]
Among the smaller villages and hamlets are three –
Broughton,
Loughton and
Woughton on the Green – that are of note in that their names each use a different pronunciation[o] of the
ough letter sequence in English.[134][135]
Education
Schools
In early planning, education provision was carefully integrated into the development plans with the intention that school journeys would, as far as possible, be made by walking and cycling. Each residential grid square was provided with a primary school (ages 5 to 8) for c.240 children, and for each two squares there was a middle school (ages 8 to 12) for c.480 children. For each eight squares there was a large secondary education campus, to contain between two and four schools for a total of 3,000 – 4,500 children. A central resource area served all the schools on a campus. In addition, each campus included a leisure centre with indoor and outdoor sports facilities and a swimming pool, plus a theatre. These facilities were available to the public outside school hours, thus maximising use of the investment.[136] Changes in central government policy from the 1980s onwards subsequently led to much of this system being abandoned. Some schools have since been merged and sites sold for development, many converted to academies, and the leisure centres outsourced to commercial providers.
As in most parts of the UK, the state secondary schools in Milton Keynes are
comprehensives,[137] although schools in the rest of Buckinghamshire still use the
tripartite system.[138] Private schools are also available.[139]
As of 2023[update], Milton Keynes is the UK's largest population centre without its own conventional university, a shortfall that the Council aims to rectify.[140] In January 2019, the council and its partner, Cranfield University, invited proposals to design a campus near the Central station for a new university, code-named
MK:U.[141] However this project seems unlikely to proceed, following a government decision in January 2023 to deny funding.[142] In June 2023, the Open University announced that it would "initiate work on the strategic and financial case to relocate [from] the OU's existing campus at Walton Hall to a new site adjacent to the central railway station" and possibly commence teaching full-time undergraduates.[143]
Milton Keynes City Discovery Centre at
Bradwell Abbey holds an extensive archive about the planning and development of Milton Keynes and has an associated research library.[144] The centre also offers an education programme (with a focus on urban geography and local history) to schools, universities and professionals.[144]
Culture, media and sport
Music
The open-air
National Bowl is a 65,000-capacity venue for large-scale events.[145]
In
Wavendon,
the Stables – founded by the
jazz musicians
Cleo Laine and
John Dankworth – provides a venue for jazz,
blues,
folk, rock,
classical, pop and
world music.[146] It presents around 400 concerts and over 200 educational events each year and also hosts the National Youth Music Camps
summer camp for young musicians.[147] In 2010, the Stables founded the biennial IF Milton Keynes International Festival, producing events in unconventional spaces and places across Milton Keynes.[148]
Milton Keynes City Orchestra is a professional freelance orchestra based at
Woughton Campus.[149]
Arts, cinema, theatre and museums
The municipal public art gallery, MK Gallery, presents free exhibitions of international contemporary art.[150] The gallery was extended and remodelled in 2018/19 and includes an
art-house cinema.[151][152][153] There are also two
multiplex cinemas; one in
CMK and one in
Denbigh.
In 1999, the adjacent 1,400-seat
Milton Keynes Theatre opened.[154] The theatre has an unusual feature: the ceiling can be lowered closing off the third tier (gallery) to create a more intimate space for smaller-scale productions.[154][155] There is a further professional performance space in
Stantonbury.[156]
Milton Keynes Arts Centre offers a year-round exhibition programme, family workshops and courses. The centre is based in some of
Linford Manor's historical exterior buildings, barns,
almshouses and
pavilions.[124] The Westbury Arts Centre in
Shenley Wood is based in a 16th-century grade II listed farmhouse building. Westbury Arts has been providing spaces and studios for professional artists since 1994.[161]
Communications and media
For television, the city is allocated to
BBC East and
ITV Anglia.[162][p] For radio, Milton Keynes is served by
Heart East (a regional commercial station based locally) and two community radio stations (MKFM and Secklow 105.5).[164][165]BBC Three Counties Radio is the local
BBC Radio station.[166] CRMK (Cable Radio Milton Keynes) is a voluntary station broadcasting on the Internet.[167]
In recent years, the City Council has promoted MK as a test-bed for experimental urban technologies. The most well-known of these is the
Starship Technologies' (largely) autonomous delivery robots: Milton Keynes provided its world-first urban deployment of these units in 2018.[175] By October 2020, said Starship, Milton Keynes had the 'world's largest autonomous robot fleet'[176] Other projects include the
LUTZ Pathfinder pod, an autonomous (self-driving) vehicle built by the Transport Systems
Catapult.
The
unitary authority area, which extends beyond the ONS-defined Milton Keynes built-up area and encompasses the town of
Olney and many rural villages and hamlets, is fully
parished.[178]
International co-operation
Although Milton Keynes has no formalised
twinning agreements, it has partnered and co-operated with various cities over the years. The most contact has been with
Almere,
Netherlands, especially on
energy management and
urban planning.[179] For several years from 1995, the city co-operated with
Tychy,
Poland,[180][181] after participating in the European City Cooperation System in Tychy in March 1994.[182]
The M1 motorway runs along the east flank of MK and serves it from junctions 13 and 14 within the environs of the city, and junctions 11a and 15 slightly further away via other connecting roads. The A5 road, designated as a
trunk road, runs right through the west of the city centre, as a
grade separateddual carriageway. Other main roads are the
A509 to Wellingborough and Kettering, and the
A421 and
A422, both running west towards
Buckingham (and Oxford) and east towards
Bedford (and Cambridge). Additionally, the
A4146 runs from (near) junction 14 of the M1 to
Leighton Buzzard.[193] Proximity to the M1 has led to construction of a number of
distribution centres, including
Magna Park at the south-eastern flank of Milton Keynes, near
Wavendon and M1 J13.[194]
Many long-distance coaches stop at the
Milton Keynes Coachway,[195] (beside M1 Junction 14), about 3.3 miles (5.3 km) from the centre and 4.3 mi (7 km) from Milton Keynes Central railway station.[196] There is also a
park and ride car park on the site.
The city is also served by a number of local and regional bus services run by national operators such as
Stagecoach and
Arriva, with most regional services stopping at major centres in the city, such as CMK (including
Milton Keynes Central railway station), Bletchley, Wolverton and Magna Park.[197] The City Council also operates an on demand bus service known as "MK Connect", which serves the whole unitary authority area.[198]
At the
2011 census, the population of the
Milton Keynes urban area, including the adjacent
Newport Pagnell and
Woburn Sands, was 229,941.[6] The population of the borough in total was 248,800,[201] compared with a population of around 53,000 for the same area in 1961.[202] In 2016, the
Office for National Statistics estimated that the Borough population will reach 300,000 by 2025.[57] The
2021 census records the population of the Milton Keynes Built-up Area as 264,349,[2] and that of the Borough (now City) as 287,060.[203]
According to the 2011 census, the average age of the population is lower than is typical for the UK's 63
primary urban areas: 25.3% of the borough population were aged under 18 (5th place) and 13.4% were aged 65+ (57th out of 63).[204][6] The "
mean age is 35.7 and the
median age is 35.[6] 18.5% of residents were born outside the UK (11th).[204] At the 2011 census, the ethnic profile was 78.9% white, 3.4% mixed, 9.7% Asian/Asian British, 7.3% Black/African/Caribbean/Black British, and 0.7% other.[6] The religious profile was that 62.0% of people were reported having a religion and 31.4% having none; the remainder declined to say: 52% are Christian, 5.1% Muslim, 3.0% Hindu; other religions each had less than 1% of the population.[6]
In 2014 and 2017, Milton Keynes ranked third in terms of contribution to the national economy, as measured by
gross value added per worker, of the 63 largest conurbations in the UK.[205][206] In 2020, its ranking slipped to seventh.[204]
Major businesses
Milton Keynes has consistently benefited from above-average economic growth, ranked as one of the UK's top five cities.[207] In 2020 it was ranked sixth of 63 for business startups (per 10,000 people).[204]
In 2013,[r] 99.4% of enterprises being
SMEs, just 0.6% of businesses locally employ more than 250 people (but more than one third of employees),[220] whereas 81.5% employ fewer than 10 people.[220] The 'professional, scientific and technical sector' contributes the largest number of business units, 16.7%.[220] The retail sector is the largest contributor of employment.[220][6] Milton Keynes has one of the highest number of business start-ups in England, but also of failures.[204] Although education, health and public administration are important contributors to employment, the contribution is significantly less than the averages for England or the South East.[220]
Employment
75% of the population is economically active, including 8.3% (of the population) who are self-employed.[6] 90% work in service industries of various sorts (of which wholesale and retail is the largest sector) and 9% in manufacturing.[6]
Social inequality
In 2015, the City of Milton Keynes had nine "lower super output areas"[s] that are in the 10% most deprived in England, but also had twelve 'lower super output areas' in the 10% least deprived in England.[222] This contrast between areas of affluence and areas of deprivation in spite of a thriving local economy, inspired local charity The Community Foundation (in its 2016 "Vital Signs" report) to describe the position as a "
Tale of Two Cities".[223]
In 2018, the number of homeless young people sleeping rough in tents around CMK attracted national headlines as it became the apex of a national problem of poverty, inadequate mental health care and unaffordable housing.[224][225] On a visit to refurbishment and extension work on the
YMCA building, Housing Minister
Heather Wheeler declared that "Nobody in this day and age should be sleeping on the street".[226]
Geography
Location and nearest settlements
Milton Keynes is in south central England, at the northern end of the
South East England region,[227] about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of
London.[3][4][5]
Its surface geology is primarily gently rolling
Oxford clay or, more formally:
... a portion of more or less dissected
boulder clay plateau, with streams falling fairly steeply to the [Great] Ouse and Ouzel flood plains, across slopes cut chiefly in Oxford clay.
Middle Jurassic rocks, in particular the
Blisworth limestone and
cornbrash, form strong features in the lands bordering the Ouse valley in the north.[230]
Its highest points are in the centre (110 m; 360 ft) and at Woodhill on the western boundary (120 m; 390 ft).[231][232] The lowest point of the urban area is in Newport Pagnell, where the
Ouzel joins the
Great Ouse (50 m; 160 ft).[233]
Parks and environmental infrastructure
Because of the (poorly drained) clay soils and the urban hard surfaces, the
development corporation identified water runoff into the Ouzel and its tributaries as a significant risk to be managed and so put in place two large balancing lakes (
Caldecotte and
Willen) and a number of smaller
detention ponds.[234] These provide an important leisure amenity for most of the year.[235] Building in the floodplains of the Ouse and Ouzel was precluded too, thus providing long-distance linear parks that are within easy reach of most residents.
The two Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Howe Park Wood and Oxley Mead, are the most significant of a number of important wildlife sites in and around MK.[236]
The nearest
Met Office weather station is in
Woburn, Bedfordshire,[238] just outside the south eastern fringe of Milton Keynes.[v] Recorded temperature extremes range from 39.6 °C (103.3 °F) during July 2022,[239] to as low as −20.6 °C (−5.1 °F) on 25 February 1947; this is the lowest temperature ever reported in England in February.[240] On 20 December 2010, the temperature fell to −16.3 °C (2.7 °F)[241]
Fellsilent, a metal band, come from and formed in Milton Keynes in 2003[284][285]
Tesseract, a
djent band, formed as a full live act in Milton Keynes in 2007.[286] Tesseract's guitarist, songwriter and producer Acle Kahney is also a former member of Fellsilent.[285]
^The area that is the subject of this article, the contiguous urban segment of the City of Milton Keynes local authority area, does not have legal city status itself although it is usually known as "the city". The
Letters Patent were awarded to the responsible local authority rather than to the settlement itself. See section
§ Formal award of city status below for more details.
^In reality, the bus operators have specified many bus routes that go through, rather than between, neighbourhoods.
^Bendixson & Platt report the Corporation as concerned at this outcome, which was an unanticipated emergent behaviour. In later developments, it aimed for increased permeability through the grid.[74]
^An additional ten-metre wide strip was originally specified to satisfy Buckinghamshire County Council's belief in a future fixed-track public transport system. In 1977 MKDC decided to cease to specify it.[77]
^The 'western expansion area' is what became
Fairfields and
Whitehouse. The 'eastern expansion area' is
Broughton including Brooklands. 'The Hub' is a development of residential tower, hotels and restaurants in CMK.
^Large-scale buildings include
Jurys Inn (10 storeys)[85]The Pinnacle:MK on Midsummer Boulevard (9 storeys)[86] and the
Vizion development on Avebury Boulevard (12 storeys),[87]
^The
Network Rail National Centre is at the western limit of Silbury Boulevard near the Central station; this building complex occupies a large land area but only rises to the equivalent of six storeys;[89] The Hotel la Tour (Marlborough Gate and Midsummer Bvd) opens April 2022 and is 50 metres tall.[90]
^
abNot in original designated area but subsequent expansion has grown to include it.[6]
^A competing paper, MK News, closed in October 2016.[169]
^An updated report for 2016 is available but does not give this data.[219]
^A "lower super output area" is a small geographic area defined by the Office of National Statistics to contain 1,000 to 1,500 residents and thus to permit consistent national comparisons.[221]
^population over 100,000.
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^There is another station at
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^
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