City of the Future - Milton Keynes

A nightwalk through Milton Keynes to the MK Gallery.
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[@LolekBezBolkaShow]

I'm moving to MK soon and I'm already in love with this city.

[@achilleaspapalias405]

Actually, MK was build having in mind the green of the area. There are over 20 million trees planted around! If you leave the centre you don't even see a single concrete building, you think you are in the country side. I've been living here for 2.5 years now and I love it!

[@ambientsoda106]

I was shocked, at how amazing and well designed the city center was! It is not a like other city centers as it is not cramped together like a shoe box and the roads are primed for newer technologies to use as well...I loved the fact it still has huge green spaces as well. Some may criticise the vast spaces, but this is what I thought many an US town hoped to realise when carrying out new builds...

[@gerardforeman5259]

It's a great place that appeals to both the commuter and the philanthropist (equally, both, and maybe mutually exclusive). As a worker bee, some years ago removing the refuse from businesses around the city in the evening, I realised its potential as a thinking person's Mecca. Looking across the then vast sky incorporating the newly built Xscape Centre ; John Peel happened to be on the radio at the time in session with a band called 'Kloot' (early 2000's). I'm not sure of the wisdom that I absorbed in that moment but suffice to say it's an amazing place, despite being almost centrally positioned in the country, it's very grounding; strangely!

[@ProfPine]

It would be nice to see you do something like this through some of the more scenic areas of Milton Keynes. Willen Lake, Campbell Park, Walking alongside the brook that stretches from Tattenhoe through Emerson Valley and Furzton. A lot of green places in MK, they are worth seeing as the centre is very different to many other places around :)

[@JohnRogersWalks]

Great idea - I'd love to return and explore further

[@darrenbroughton9277]

I've just come across this video, only nearly 7 years to late lol. Did you ever go back to Milton Keynes?... I've lived here 41 years and like the the original comment said, MK isn't just a concrete jungle and unfortunately, that's just the stereotype it's been labelled with from day trippers and tourists who only visit Central MK for shopping sprees and to have a night out etc. Literally, a 2 minute walk across the bridge from the gallery you visited that night, is Campbell Park. It has some stunningly beautiful scenery and more fields and open space than you would know what to do with! It also holds music concerts in the summer and it also has a canal running through with a lovely little pub down by the river. Also, a 5 minute walk south from the trainstation, is the tear drop lakes. We have many lakes in MK, including Willen Lake, Furzton Lake, Caldecotte Lake and Loughton Lodge Lake to name but a few. They're all lovely to visit all year round, but ideally, spring and summertime would be better. I personally love MK myself!!!👍

[@craighobbs3708]

MK is actually a great place to live

[@Diaspora1984]

fantastic videos as always - where all your dreams...!!!

[@properact]

"I always suspected that eternity would look like Milton Keynes." J.G. Ballard

[@JohnRogersWalks]

+properact that's very reassuring - thank you

[@adelegeorgemcneil3709]

I use to live in Milton Keynes years ago my younger years John it's great there

[@JohnRogersWalks]

it seems like a good place to grow up Adele

[@adelegeorgemcneil3709]

@@JohnRogersWalks thanks john

[@littleowldme]

The darkness actually makes it look far prettier than it is. Now it's hostile. I used to bike over the city centre when I was 15/16. I would be alone and even gone past midnight..I always felt 100% safe. I used to even bike down the new A5 from Stacey Bushes to Bletchley! Wouldn't do either now...far to dangerous! But I'd even bike the A5 again, sooner than walk around the city centre alone.

[@derekpyne]

Hi John. Just discovered this one from 5 years ago. You in my neck of the woods. I moved up here from the East End in 1992 and enjoying your walks in London and Essex but was surprised when I came across this one This walk was the concrete bit but there is a lot of green walks up here including continuing parklands where you can go quite a way without crossing any major roads. Quite a few lakes up here too. The area I live is one of the original 13 villages and near the site of Bradwell Abbey. In the last few years Milton Keynes has got bigger as more surrounding countryside Inc farmlands has been swooped up by the developers. As I said I enjoy yours walks but was interesting seeing you up here even if you was in a rush and not your normal steady pace. 😊👍

[@tinplategeek1058]

The "This is not a toilet" sign doesn't refer to the bushes nearby but to the door in the road flyover which is the entrance to the market inspectors' office. Just a little titbit of local info.

[@littleowldme]

Because it WAS a toilet back in the day! Probably still got loos in there, for market peeps.

[@andyc6542]

Fantastic watch John!

[@JohnRogersWalks]

Thanks Andy

[@lizard1533]

Great video john!

[@JohnRogersWalks]

Thanks Lizard

[@Gfresh844]

Very good video. Watching this did make me realise that for a place that was once touted as the city of the future, the city centre (especially from the outside) now looks very dated to a large degree. I lived in Milton Keynes until I was 19 (84-2003) and locations like the food centre appear virtually as they did from how I first remember it as a kid in the late 80's. With the exception of places such as intu as well as the theatre district, a lot of it is aesthetically stuck in a time warp. That said, in terms of the actual atmosphere of the City as a whole, it seems a lot more hostile and less safe than before. I know no place is ever without it's troubles- but it has the feel of more like a mini London now. I guess that was bound to happen as time moves on though.

[@JohnRogersWalks]

Thanks for sharing that

[@simongreenidge6454]

To be fair most of any given town or city is stuck in a time warp e.g. most of London's buildings are artifacts from bygone eras sometimes with out-of-date plumbing, electrics, heating etc. It's just that many of us can directly relate first hand to MK's buildings built around the 1980s and now see them as old. Perhaps if these structures are maintained and upgraded properly through the years, future generations might view them with a different outlook. Perhaps they should be replaced outright, but that's a different story. I've lived in MK since 1998 and I can see that it could represent a kind of suburban hell for anyone in their mid-teens and into their twenties; I've contemplated moving my family to a city once our kids reach their mid-teens (to make their lives more interesting). The thing is that for many people, once you reach your mid-30s and you have a partner and planning to have kids, the very well planned MK makes sense. When I visit traditional towns in the UK (that have grown organically) they can seem like a mess, barely coping with the 21st century. For many Londoners in the 60s and 70s MK did represent the future - they were leaving behind squalid Victorian (or earlier) housing and moving to a place that promised central heating, modern plumbing in a fresh, new and very optimistic town. The reality is that most of MK will remain "boring" suburbia, fulfilling its main purpose of providing families with the opportunity to own a home and a safe place to raise a family. Thankfully today it is far less the cultureless London commuter town than it used to be.

[@danielbiggs6085]

Quite an interesting view. I've lived in MK all my life and its nice to see an outsiders view. Still not sure wot you think of it though?

[@farcry5funnymoments677]

Living here isn’t bad but some places are dodgy like Lakes Estate

[@buddygreen4079]

My manor, netherfield. Hood life.

[@garryferrington811]

Six mentions of Iain Sinclair.

[@drtydawg73]

shame the food centre (green house) isnt there now. :-) wondering what they will build there now, something utterly useless and ugly no doubt.

[@drtydawg73]

its not as nice as it was 10 years back. :-(

[@peterbuckley265]

HI AGAIN JOHN, YOU MENTIONING PATHFINDER IN YOUR M.K. FILM REMINDED ME THAT THE VERY LAST COACH OVER THE OLD 1890 LEA BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER LEA A FEW HOURS BEFORE CLOSURE ON A FRID DURING AUG 1995 WAS A PATHFINDER COMPANY COACH, ? LAYING THE PATH FOR THE NEW BIDGE OPENED ON THE MONDAY AFTER, PETER, N.E, LONDON.

[@JohnRogersWalks]

Hi Peter - I wonder if they were inspired by the books

[@beatmassive1452]

I’m 14 and live the village across from wicken

[@justtalia7114]

Beat Massive Stop giving your info!

[@MeTheRob]

Despite the Illuminati Druid leyline grid system, I would get lost there. All the underpasses look the same. I feared that when you said 'Thamesmead' while walking through one of them, that you would invoke those jolly chaps from Clockwork Orange ..... but maybe the skateboarder is the only juvenile delinquent in town. Really Mr. Rogers, I don't think I have ever heard you swear before. 'Look at that bus - it's fucking BLUE !!!!' God help us. Even Ballard could not have predicted blue buses !

[@JohnRogersWalks]

+MeTheRob I even shocked myself with my profanity - but such was the melon-twisting nature of the place I couldn't control it.

[@michaelhanratty5124]

It is easy to get lost. Those underpasses are disorientating

[@gypsy_gallus]

Where can I find more info on Cabal leylines pls?

[@sianwarwick633]

​@@gypsy_gallusgoogle ?

[@kevingreen7355]

I remember Milton Keynes back in the late 80s/early 90s and used to love going there. It had so much potential and could well have been a city for the future! Instead, it never evolved properly and became just a city of roundabouts, car parks and retail centres, went into decline and became an epic fail. Now its just full of crackheads and homeless! Milton Keynes - City of the Past!

[@DTAM-Aviationshorts290]

I live there now I live in Oxley park

[@gypsy_gallus]

It was nicer in the past. Feel like I'm living overseas now 😂

[@stangregory3721]

M4 vs B3

[@myrahouse2368]

I don’t like how MK has swallowed all the nice towns they are all kinda lost with the place now. It’s got no Soul… very easy to get lost 😞 round abouts everywhere. Everything is there you could possibly want for.

[@rossella7207]

Mate, have you been to London... Mk is not the future. I live here

[@justtalia7114]

Rossella sparkly Hide your location! Leah was kidnapped!

[@justtalia7114]

(I think)

[@justtalia7114]

Oh, and I was born in London, it’s like nothing.

[@MENSA.lady2]

If MK is the city of the future than I'm moving to the countryside. MK was built to house the ever expanding population in South-East England. Sadly it attracted the riff-raff that nobody else wanted. Today it's proof that it does not have to be old to be a slum. I saw the writing on the wall. Sold my house in Eaglestone in 1983 and moved out.

[@Frenic1]

MK ultra 😂

[@JohnRogersWalks]

Brilliant- wish I’d thought of that for the thumbnail