Milton Keynes
Designated 1967 as UK's most ambitious new town. 1km grid roads, Redway paths. Now £13.3B economy, fourth-highest startup rate. Target 400,000 residents by 2050.
Milton Keynes was designed from scratch to prove that planned cities could work. In 1967, the government designated a site equidistant from London, Birmingham, Leicester, Oxford, and Cambridge as the location for Britain's largest and most ambitious new town. The target: 250,000 residents in a rationally planned urban grid.
The designers studied what had gone wrong with earlier new towns and revisited garden city ideals. They created a 1km grid of major roads—spacing chosen so residents would always be within six minutes' walk of a bus stop. The Redway system of independent cycle and pedestrian paths separated traffic from people. Intensive tree planting gave Milton Keynes more forest cover than most English cities.
The gamble paid off. Milton Keynes now hosts a thriving economy worth £13.3 billion in gross value added (2022) and the fourth-highest startup rate per capita in the UK. Network Rail, Santander, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and Red Bull Racing all maintain major facilities. More people commute into Milton Keynes for work than commute out—a reversal of the dormitory-town model that characterized earlier new towns.
The 2025 government 'Renewed Town' proposal would add 25,000 more homes and mass rapid transit. Plans target 335,000 residents by 2031 and 400,000 by 2050. The economy could grow by 70% by mid-century.
By 2026, Milton Keynes offers evidence that planned cities can evolve beyond their original conception—if the planning is good enough.