Milton Keynes street names
There are lots of weird things that appeal to me, but one of them is the idea of planned communities. I think the concept of producing a place to live in a space where none yet exists is quite idealistic. There’s something very satisfying about getting to decide what it looks like, where things are located, how it will flow, what are the underlying design principles, etc.
Of course one of my favourite planned spaces is Walt Disney World which famously was built in the middle of nowhere much and everything had to be built. For decades I have researched almost every aspect of its construction and every detail is fascinating. The fact that it is still standing, still functioning and still successful is one of the reasons I admire this place so much.
Closer to home, MUCH closer, is another planned community that I love learning about. It is of course Milton Keynes where I live. Here is another planned community that had its genesis in the late 60s with the first spaces built in the 70s and where development still happens today. It may not seem like it but there are lots of similarities between MK and WDW!
If you’ve never visited, I must explain that Milton Keynes is made up of a series of grid roads: Horizontals and Verticals (or H and V roads as they are known locally). The intersection of those roads is made up mostly by roundabouts, of which there are many!
The resulting grid squares are where most of the residential or business areas are located. Each grid square has a name and is a distinct “neighbourhood”. They include parks, local shops, sometimes schools and meeting places and often share a common design.
But more interestingly (for me at least) is that almost every grid square has a theme for the streets within it! In some cases, the roads can take the name of a field or road that used to be there but most of the time, these streets are built out of nothing, which means that the themes could be almost absolutely anything. From composers to coffee houses, via valleys, butterflies and British painters, it would seem that anything goes.
Here is the list of themes:
So the next time you’re in Milton Keynes and find yourself driving around one of the estates, check out the street names and see if you can guess the themes!
So the next time you’re in Milton Keynes and find yourself driving around one of the estates, check out the street names and see if you can guess the themes!
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