Context 162 - November 2019

C O N T E X T 1 6 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9 31 New towns SIMON PEART Capturing the significance of a designed city A new city grounded in utopian modernism, Milton Keynes has developed a local list to ensure that its 20th-century heritage assets can be considered in a context of future growth. Most of us will have encountered the common perception of what conservation is about: the business of preserving stuff that’s a least a few centuries old. As we know, conservation is in fact a dynamic process that adapts and evolves as political, social and economic attitudes change. Those involved have sought from its beginning to be at the forefront of understanding the significance of those assets that do not conform to the common perception of what heritage is. Victorian, art deco, industrial, wartime, modern, brutalism and post-modern architecture are all examples that have gone or are going through a period of retrospective revaluation, often prompted by losses of prominent assets within those groups. In Milton Keynes a local list has been developed to ensure that the new town’s 20th-century heritage assets can be considered within the agenda for future growth. Over the past 50 years, Milton Keynes has per- formed incredibly well economically (its produc- tivity is 27 per cent above national levels and it is ranked in the five most productive cities outside London), and it has a high degree of satisfaction among its 270,000 residents. The city continues to have an ambitious appetite for growth, which can raise a familiar yet unnecessary tension between growth and the heritage significance of the earlier new town phases. Decision makers often perceive development opportunities as a choice between the heritage value of a place and the economic investment on offer, failing to explore more sympathetic options that take advantage of the placemaking benefits to local character that heritage assets provide. At a time when new settlements and develop- ment corporations are again being discussed as solutions to the need for new homes, the achievements at Milton Keynes (often shortened locally to ‘MK’) take on a new degree of rel- evance. The initial idea of a new town in North Buckinghamshire (nicknamed ‘Pooleyville’) was worked up by Fred Pooley of Buckinghamshire County Council, complete with monorail. However, it would ultimately be Milton Keynes Development Corporation that delivered the new town to an alternative master plan. Between designation in 1967 and the start of works in 1970, a team of experts led by Robert Llewelyn-Davies produced the comprehensive master plan that was unique in featuring a large grid road network, generous interwoven green landscape and the dispersal of its land uses across its polycentric plan. Milton Keynes has endured national derision during its lifetime, largely due to the dedicated use of a modern architectural approach employed by Derek Walker, chief architect to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC), and its grid-road network. Central Library, Central Milton Keynes, 1971–81, designed by Bucks County Council Architects Department (Paul Marcrow and Tse-Chiu Ng) and The Whisper, a sculpture by Andre Wallace, 1984. Both are listed Grade II.