How Britain Made a Dystopian City.. (American Reacts)
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I,m sitting here watching this from Milton Keynes, I can honestly say that this video does not show the city as it is. I,m sure the video was filmed during the Covid lockdown explaining the dystopian look of the place .
After graduating, I lived in Milton Keynes for 35 years. It has been a fabulous place to live with great work opportunities and fabulous access to transport hubs. It is great for kids. Our local pub was built 300 years before the reign of Henry VIII. The city is very green with fabulous open spaces. It has over 4000 miles of cycle paths allowing access all over the city without going on roads. It has been a really nice place to live. His attitude is incredibly negative and doesn’t reflect what it is like to actually live there.
Well, it's certainly perfect for my daughter's in laws, they're THE most boring folk on the planet, they make beige look exciting in comparison 😅
@@kathchandler4919 Sorry but I don’t understand the comment. Like any place, Milton Keynes is what you make of it. You can grasp the opportunities and have a good life or whine and be negative…
@Toadhall22 that's exactly it, you don't understand my comment , figures 🙄
@@kathchandler4919 no I don’t and frankly I like to keep things positive or say nothing
@@Toadhall22 you mean positive like talking about whining ? Oh yes ? Anyway this is UA-cam, podcasts are there for opinion to be given, I know MK so why shouldn't I have an opinion.
I live here and love it. It is not empty of people. Milton Keynes was built around 13 villages & towns so has modern and old
That's a bit like Telford which is another new town built around old villages.
America is one big "new town"
MK is just up the road from me. I’ve often been shopping there and my son lived and worked there for a year. Funnily enough I always think it reminds me of the US! Also this video is hugely exaggerated, there are people everywhere. I’ve never been there and seen an absence of people. It’s really not as bad as he’s making out.
Just had a look on google maps and didn't see one person in the centre. Just car parks everywhere and funny looking road surfaces [small white stones set in mud/tar].
Looks real depressing!
Shelly where are you? I'm in Bedford, I know MK very well of course!
@@roseadams5362 I’m on the other side in Towcester.
It's a Shithole.
Most towns in UK took 1000 years to build, it can't be done in 10 years, societies grow they are not made overnight
we evolve our surroundings
1000 years to build, all destroyed in the last 40 years.
I'm not convinced:
Basildon, Crawley, Bracknell, Harlow, Peterlee, Stevenage, Hemel Hempstead there are others but I haven't visited. built since 1940's
Also places like Bourneville, and New Ears wick, both built by Chocolate companies.
Agreed it can't be done in 10 years, communities, need a couple of generations, I think
It took 40 years to complete the original plan and it’s been evolving for another 15 years since then - so NOT 10 years.
In the US Levittwns were built within a year or two in the 1950's. People have gussied up the original s pacious boxy homes with enough land for a very nice back yard. Well designed. Built within the racist federrules on mortgages which eliminated the ability of black [people to buy. My brother boufght a home in NJ in a similar development. Veterans Lending program which inspected and assured the best quality construction. Half acre. MMonthly mortgage was $300, modest taxes.
Went to the Milton Keynes bowl twice in the 90's for a concert. All I can remember about the drive were the endless roundabouts.
Same I went to a few concerts at the bowl, lots of roundabouts and we to sing the u2 song where the street have no names and slip in Milton Keynes into the verse ! All the roundabouts had numbers
The grid road system linked by roundabouts enables us to get anywhere in the city within a few minutes - even at peak times. All the buildings and people are kept away from the grid roads - keeps us away from traffic noise and pollution.
Yep. Roundabouts.
It's those endless roundabouts that keep traffic flowing brilliantly here. 🤗
@@vickkibradfield4592
The person who put the country's first roundabout in Letchworth must have been quite surprised when Milton Keynes was built. Easiest place on Earth to navigate, fastest interior roads of any town in the UK, probably up there for anywhere on Earth, national speed limit throughout and hit the right times of day and the roundabouts make it a hoot trying to maintain 70MPH through them (yeah Darth 70, like you stuck to the speed limits).
We live in MK (in a 250 year old farmhouse!) There is the old in amongst the modern city. He didnt venture off the grid into the housing areas which have lots of green spaces and are often built with curved roads and lovely landscaping. He should visit here now, in Spring. Even along the grid system daffoldils and tulips abound in their thousands. Yes, no people on the roads because there is an entirely separate system of "redways" for pedestrians that go over and under the grid and link the "boxes" of the grid (each sq mile is a housing estate, the grid road intersections are all roundabouts). MK has all the dining, shopping theatre and cinemas you need plus activity sports (skiing and skydiving come to mind) and is located just 40 mins from the edge of the Cotswolds. London is just 30 mins away. No, im not a fan of modernist architecture either but at least here it is in its place. It is meant to be modernist. It was all the rage when it was designed. Oh, and the point was a famous landmark of MK. They want to pull it down but there is an attempt to preserve it as it was an important landmark in the past. Hence it is sitting empty right now. When I moved here it was the mutliscreen cinema, nightclub and restaurants and the place to go. We all think this is our US style city!
The point was the only cinema of it's kind for years in the area. I'm from Letchworth, we have a cinema but when we wanted more of a night out, after getting our first cars of course, the Point was a place we all had to go to. At the time it was quite exotic, a neon lit pyramid with an exoskeleton acting as a beacon in the night, it was all our first experiences in the Keynes and it's retail/commercial centre. I suppose nowadays it's difficult to relay just how different it was, or that it was the only place with a video games arcade in it (all the local arcades had disappeared by this point), I remember playing TMNT with my mates there. There were many good times had in the middle of the Keynes by a lot of folk from outside the town, and all because of a quirky neon lit pyramid in the middle. BTW, love the Peace Pagoda too, used to stop there for lunch on my way to popping in to the Minolta service facility on the edge of the town there and the Leica one closer to the centre.
I was born in the area and have lived in various parts of Milton Keynes for 69 years, and I love living here- as do at least 80% of the near 300000 people who live here.
The video is about 5 % accurate in its representation of Milton Keynes, and in no way reflects what it is like or what is like living here.
Recently a major survey by Compare the Market ranked Milton Keynes as number one for the best city in the UK to live in.
The grid roads system with all intersections as roundabouts keeps the traffic moving fast at all times. This is why when people drive through they don’t see any people - it’s deliberate - everything is hidden from the grid roads by trees and bushes. This dramatically cuts down traffic noise and pollution from all the locations where people live and walk.
There is a network of cycle and walking routes that completely avoid the grid roads - around 400 miles of them .
Huge areas of parkland , river valley parks , large lakes, 3 historic woodlands, and fields of sheep - all within the defined 30 square miles boundary of the city. Two rivers and the Grand Union canal wind there way through the city. One of the highest amounts of parkland of any city in the UK, and 22 million trees planted.
A wide range of sports are available, two large multiplex cinemas, one major theatre, plenty of pubs - some hundreds of years old - usually one in each of the dozen or so historic villages that still exist within the city. Many restaurants and pub restaurants. Also three old towns in the city.
All of the above is within the 30 square miles of the city boundary.
Central Milton Keynes is our ‘square mile’ - not just the shopping centre- at one end a large park, then the large shopping centre, bars, restaurants, cinema , theatre, indoor ski slope, various other sports and entertainment area, commercial area, then more restaurants and bars and finally MK station where you can travel to many destinations on fast intercity trains ( eg London 30 minutes- 50 miles away).
Milton Keynes was not built in ten years , it took 40 years to complete all the original plan, and it’s still being developed.
One thing Milton Keynes is NOT - a dystopian city .
100% Agree, shockingly unrepresentative of how great this place is. So sad that someone would take the time to make such an ill informed video.
It's a hell hole like the rest of the UK put your glasses on.
The Reason the Xscape is so tall is because its an Indoor Ski Slope! He forgot to mention that part!
Yes. They ski on the inside, just in case people don't know (and not the sloping outside of the building).
I lived in Milton Keynes and it was one of the nicest places to live. It regularly polls as the population with the highest happiness in the country. It’s got more trees per person than any city in Europe. Lots of wide open green spaces and parks. All well maintained by a trust that earns it income from renting out shops in the city. You can drive around the city without traffic jams and park up outside the main city centre for relatively low cost.its got the highest GDP per person outside the city of London.
There are some older estates in the city that are a bit grim - all concrete and plastic, but the planners soon learnt their lessons and gave people what they wanted.
It is the place where I was born, and I completely agree with this video. It's also the reason why my family and I moved out of Milton Keynes. When I was younger, everything appeared different to my eyes. However, when I revisited the place, I could notice the changes, or maybe I was not ready to see it earlier.
I live about 25 miles from Milton Keynes and regularly go there to shop.
Its car friendliness is the main reason, particularly compared to the closer to me car hating Oxford.
I can park all day in MK within easy walking distance of the shops for not much more than it would cost me to park for an hour in Oxford, that's if I could actually find somewhere convenient in Oxford to park at all.
I lived in MK for five years. Loved the place! Would move back tomorrow if I could. Easy to get around. Convenient etc..
I’ve lived in Mk all my life and I grew up with a great sense of community. The city centre is very different to the individual neighbourhoods. I also think the videos shown didn’t do the city centre justice. The city centre is quite lively on a weekend or a summers day. Also the grid system and the under paths are great for the youth. Most teenagers walk from place to place. There’s also lots to do in terms of leisure.
Most people that seem to be unhappy with MK don’t even live here.
As someone that doesn't live there (I'm in Letchworth, a place conceptionally not too dissimilar to the Keynes) I think it's just a meme to shit on the place at this point. I think it started in the 80s when they built loads of housing before the businesses arrived so some people housed there were kind of stranded for a while. The place is the simplest place to navigate in Britain, has the fastest through roads, is basically all green space with buildings dumped inside it, and the Dali Lama clearly likes the place, he built the first ever Tibetan Peace Pagoda outside Tibet there, I used to stop to eat my lunch there once a week on my way to the Minolta service facility there.
I was brought up in Milton Keynes in the 80's 90's. Lived there as an adult until the early 10's. Moved away to Bexhill-on-Sea and Hastings where I am today.
Growing up there all this was just the norm. Going to other towns with their more standard layouts with their high streets seemed odd to me until I realised that actually they do work better as a community focused place to live.
You would seldom bump into anyone you knew in the city and you would just go to places you needed and go home again.
Now Hastings I know gets a bad rap which in some areas of the town I can see why, but it is actually a great place to live. Nower days I love ambling through town just seeing what takes our fancy and bumping into people and seeing the bustle of people meandering through the high street. Gives it a more connected feel, a sense of community, which Milton Keynes really lacks.
I return to MK to see family and I can see living from the outside of the place how quickly it is becoming more dated and dilapidated on each visit. I'm pleased to have moved away and pleased to have been brought up in MK because it did always feel safe and there was a lot of green space to be a child.
But it certainly lacks that "soul" that you get from older more conventional towns and cities.
Swings and roundabouts with this place. (pun intended)
Lived in posher South Bucks then work took us to MK. Had a fab house with boat and mooring then another huge eco home. Lived very well, did not experience much negative, very clean place, lots of green places. Left in 2002 but had nothing but positive experience. Much misaligned
Some of the scenes that were supposed to be set in America in the movie Superman IV a Quest for Peace were filmed in Milton Keynes.
Because it was done on the cheap and it shown
@@Salfordian Yes 😂
One was shot just outside Baldock. You'd be amazed how many films are shot around Herts, Beds and Bucks. Shoot, if you ever want to know what Letchworth looks like just watch the 3rd Cornetto trilogy film. The "disco" is the local cinema and they refused to give the frontage put up for the film back so it still looks as it did in that scene.
@@Salfordian
All 4 OG Superman movies are mostly shot in the UK, it's common practice. Batman, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises are also films shot in the UK. At the end of Batman Begins there's a panoramic shot of the countryside around Wayne Manor, it's got a medieval church in it FFS. 🤣
Like you, I watch a fair bit of British TV. For years, I've been hearing Brits make jokes about Milton Keynes, but somehow never got around to even looking at some pics of it. This video was a real eye-opener.
On another note, I've been watching your reactions for 2 or 3 years now. It's been really interesting watching as you have transformed from someone who seemed rather uninformed (NOT the same as stupid) about the world in which you live, to someone who has strong and well-founded opinions. Well done Joel. Keep it up.
Milton Keynes in my head will always be a rave venue called The Sanctuary which was legendary within jungle/hardcore circles. Funny enough they knocked it down and now its an Ikea so ive still never ventured further than this spot. It is very easy to get to but weird as its a grid Square with letters and numbers for roads. I'm sure the housing areas have some community, sure the city centre is dry but he only covered the shops really
👆
That’s what I think of when I think Milton Keynes #HTID 😂
Came to make exactly the same comment about The Sanctuary 😁🎵🎶
Milton Keynes, like any attempt at a New Town, has always had a bad press, and never more prejudiced than this crazy video. Showing film footage from years ago bears no resemblance to the Milton Keynes of today. You've been 'had' to large extent here, Joel. Now established it's a pretty nice place to live! But sadly its reputation as a disaster lives on. I'm not from Milton Keynes and have no emotional skin in the game to make me want to defend it. But I do know.a very prejudiced piece of fool reporting when I see it. Take a trip there on your next visit. And then get back to us!
Thanks for this opinion, this prejudiced old video certainly doesn’t represent MK. It’s a much nicer place to live than some of the UK,s older towns that have graffiti everywhere and boarded up shops, with empty high streets.
He keeps showing Bakewell in the Peak District, that’s a tourist town with no evening entertainment except the pubs, and probably no jobs, it’s a beautiful little town to retire to I’m sure ❤
Strange that Jps frowns at Milton Keynes, when the whole of America is based on the theory of putting vehicles first. There's some amazing aspects to Milton Keynes, it's very green and lots of open spaces.
JPS did say that MK epitomises the whole of America.
My daughter and son in law lived in MK. As they were both disabled it was very easy to get around and well thought out. You can walk everywhere without crossing a road and there are lots of green areas and trees. It may not have the history, but for some people it is ideal.
I skipped through this as I know Milton Keynes is a delightful place, all areas have off road cycle lanes, often cycling through parks, its clean, spacious and famous for its concrete cows and roundabouts. It has nice house and an area in the centre that often has wonderful shows and acts. I think the man in the video should get out of his car.
There used to be more roundabouts in MK than people at one point😆
The joke is apparently the road designer left his coffee cup over the plans and left cup rings all over it, so they built them as roundabouts 🙌😂
This video is fascinating, slightly exaggerated but still fascinating. Great content ✌️
I remember visiting Milton Keynes as a child in (probably) the early '90s, and as someone from a semi-rural area it felt so glamorous and modern - particularly 'The Point' entertainment complex! You should have a look at Poundbury, the town built by King Charles - there are plenty of UA-cam videos about it.
Milton Keynes has everything a person wants. Places to entertain, outdoor spaces to exercise, great cycling network.
It also has a great artificial real snow ski slope.
Milton Keynes reminds me alot of Basildon, another new town, very rough town in parts but unlike Milton Keynes hardly any businesses survived there. Surprising for a town near London not sure if it's changed in the last 10 years but i was dyer
Or Telford or the new town parts of Stevenage and Swindon.
Didnt Milton Keynes have concrete cows in the fields around the city? 😆
That sums up the place nicely. A concrete fake cowpat.
In 1 field, and yes they are still there
C9ws now in museum, being of cultural significance and replaced by plastic replicas.
They are still there, I tried to get them listed a few years ago, but apparently the original ones were put in storage to protect them because people keep stealing them, the current ones are replicas. Often run past them :)
I live in MK and have done for over 20 years. Everything he said in this video, I believe every long term resident has thought at some point, however, it is very different to everywhere else in the country. If you only film the empty abandoned buildings, and every city has them, then it will look crap. Whilst I agree the shopping centre lacks individual shops, it is one of the largest in the country and quite pleasant and impressive as a structure inside. What is amazing about MK is the 300 miles of dedicated foot and cycle ways away from the roads and the amount of park land. Do I like it? Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. It can feel like living in a Motorway Service Centre and you find yourself noticing things like wonky street lights you would never notice anywhere else. But, like most things, it looks better when there are people about, the sun in the sky and there are leaves on the trees. MK is not pretentious, it can be quite calming, and maybe even a little 'Zen' to walk around. If I had a magic wand, then yeah, there's stuff I'd change about MK, but you can say that about anywhere. X
Sounds like a reasonable assessment to me.
When the town was newly built it was a little grim. Certainly lacks the quaint charm of the rest of England. However now bedded in and greened it's a very relatively new but nice place to live and work.
Skelmersdale, in Lancashire, was built on the same principles to house the overspill from Liverpool, and turned out much the same as Milton Keynes. A lot smaller and less well known, obviously, but a lot of this would be very recognisable to Skem residents.
It was very much a purpose built town and i remember it being built although i lived a fair distance away in Birmingham i couldn't wait to go down to see it. It's not as bad as this video is making out. A lot of town's and cities have ugly buildings if you search enough. The planners also put some concrete cows in a field which ended up being a tourist attraction lollll.
I visited MK in 2012 and it seemed good to me. Lots if wide open spaces, green areas, cycle tracks and footpaths.
It also seemed to have very well developed leisure services, full of people and busy life.
Is it a conventional British town - no. But no-one would expect that would they? If you put that out of your mind and see it for what it is and what’s there for the people who live there, it seems pretty good.
That’s the impression I got anyway.
Taste and class is lacking with you.
This seems at times a very old film, but I notice the delivery robots. But Milton Keynes has been my home for the past 40 years, it’s beautiful in its own idiosyncratic way, not a tourist town, but a town to grow up in safety and near to nature, there is greenery everywhere, you can’t tell we’re the city begins and the country side ends. I thank God for Milton Keynes having grown up in Birmingham and lived in London for several years.
Not so car centred but village centred.
This is the fastest grown towns in the UK, it has always had the lowest unemployment rate in the UK never getting much than 2.5 to 3 percent
The original film was posted by Jimmy the Giant 12 days ago, so I suppose it’s up to date. But do you think he wasn’t as balanced as he might have been? Where could he have done more to accentuate the positive? Was he being unfair and selective with the negative stuff?
That's the trouble, it's never been allowed to grow generically, it's constantly being block built, the latest I've seen are tiny little houses , all of a kind , like that song, you know , 'little boxes, on the hillside, little boxes made of sticky tacky' only it's not that interesting, it's flat!
I think he included quite a lot of old film clips, especially at the start. But it does raise, inadvertently, what is that you want a city to be? What do you want to get from a city and what you want to give to it? He is right when he says it’s easy to get any where, but when you look at the old part like Bletchley or Wolverton, Fennystratford, Stoney, Broughton to name but a few, you get the feel of these old places and you turn away from them. In Stoney the Princes murdered in the Tower of London were murdered, stayed at a tavern there, which is still there with a plaque on its front, sadly a tavern no longer. Milton Keynes is still a new city, one of the newest, other than Telford, and it takes time to build up its own culture, its own atmosphere.
It’s 30 mins apron to get from MK to central London, that’s faster than many living in London can get there, do you really need loads of theatres on your door step, though MK has two.
The only dystopian view is this diatribe of a film. This is not a comment on your good self Joel, just this film you have picked up.
@@robertjohnsontaylor3187 Wolverton reminds me of Edmonton in London circa late 1970s.
Also comparing MK to small, choc box market towns isn’t the best comparison.
Mk a dive don’t go
I used to be a Commissioning Engineer and was based at home near Portsmouth, however my office was in Bletchley, part of MK. When I went to the office I would stay in Stony Stratford which is a lovely old town, but now part of MK. I would avoid the centre, no need to go as Stony was great for shops , pubs and restaurants.
Made a video about MK for a uni project last year and definitely felt very eerie just walking about it as I literally saw no one walking about the city apart from in the shopping centre
I went through Milton Keynes once on my way from Darlington to Hastings, it was via a coach so I never had any say in the matter. This was back in 2014 I was going down south for my mother's funeral, anyway when we went through the town my first were... " Where the fork am I now" I was expecting to hear Ghost Town by The Specials to start blaring out of somewhere. It wasn't until we were leaving the town that I found out where we were as a sign said something like 'thank-you for visiting Milton Keynes', I'm glad on the journey back a few days later it was dark, though saying it did look better in the dark due to the lights. I think all the new towns that were built under that have become shite buckets, near where I live in Darlington you have Newton Aycliffe about 6 miles up the road and round the corner. Over the years it's more or less become a ghost town, when I first moved to the North East and stayed at Newton Aycliffe for a couple of weeks, as far as I could work it out Tesco's was the highlight of the town.
Couldn't agree with you more, Killingworth New Town was built in about 5 years, nowhere near as big as MK but just as cobbled together, it met its demise after almost all families were moved out, by choice, of the blocks of high rise Maisonettes , all called Garths & linked together by walkways all the way around. They (the powers that be) decided it would be an excellent place to house ex prisoners, this being a huge mistake as the former inmates didn't seem to realise they had moved from incarceration & started showing their disdain by throwing televisions , old fridges etc from the walkways . It only took once for a TV to land within feet of some official or other & they started clearing the blocks , within months they started pulling them down. Now Killingworth has no high rise homes, has been allowed to grow generically and is rather a nice place with happy inhabitants, oh & they dropped New Town from the name !
@@kathchandler4919
I remember in the 90s rewatching episodes of What Happened to the Likely lads and thinking the modern housing design was remarkably similar to some of the housing I saw in parts of my town (Letchworth). There was a trend in the 70s to build cheap and put huge windows in the front to make the main living area seem "spacious", an illusion as these properties are inherently pokey. The big windows made these houses a pain in the arse to heat and cool, it's only modern gas filled double glazing that made these designs comfortable, but boy are they pokey even for the one child families they're designed to house. Likely lads was filmed in Killingworth, no doubt used because modernism was all the rage until people found out they were living in plasterboard houses that fell to pieces after 10 years and where you can hear a pin drop in your neighbour's house. 70s and 80s houses were shit, luckily in Letchworth these were banned in the 90s as these cheap and nasty builds violated the town charter and the council were worried about getting sued again (the first time was for ripping up 2 grass verges and replacing them with parking areas on my road, one outside my house and one next to it on the other side of a little green), grass verges along with all the green spaces are all protected here under the charter.
I've seen alternative documentaries where it showed people moving out of their destitute slums in london wuth no toilets or separate kitchen and going into (at the time) nice new housing with toilets, kitchens, plenty of bedrooms and a garden. It's fine looking at these houses now from a position of relative affluence
If you just look at the centre: sure. But where the people really are, the villages around the centre, are very nice and liveable. The whole city is way more than the centre.
Two issues here : Hemel Water Gardens is still there. He went from the Water Gardens to what is now the pedestrianised Marlowes ( 2 different areas ).
Second? Look at Willen Lake & MK Redways rather than the big 1960s brutalist blocks in the .. er .. less salubrious areas/ great honking shopping centre in MK.
Appreciate he’s doing it for the video, but MK really isn’t that bad…
Also the New Towns ( Have a look a Stevenage 👀 ) were partly overspill and partly because so many people had had their areas destroyed in the previous years.
Honestly, I like Hemel. You are right, the film was misleading showing two different places.
I went to MK in the early 80s and it was one of the first big malls in the UK at the time and was very impressive. But you're right they're everywhere now and the internet is just easier.
Another place you might want to look up is Thamesmead in London which was built on marshland at around the same time as MK. There are historic videos on YT about it. It was used as a dystopian setting even when it was first built, in the movie Clockwork Orange.
I worked in Milton Keynes for 10 years though I lived out in the countryside. The city is like a series of interconnected villages with the centre as a central hub. I thoroughly enjoyed working there, driving around was easy and then you had a shopping area, entertainments area, area with restaurants and bars, and easy to walk and cycle around in safety. Yes it is new and it is modern and its is green and full of parks. Just because this guy doesn't like it does not mean it is all bad, it is just his opinion.
I've been to Milton Keynes once or twice and just find it feels very odd, like how many roundabouts does one tow need?. But the two or three people I know who grew up their said it was a great place to grow up. They could be lying but they seemed to genuinely be proud to be from there.
MK is great mate, you are welcome to come visit, followed you for years and will show you round the city any time. My family have lived in north Bucks since before MK was founded and its immeasurably improved, there are facilities, services, jobs, transport and it was all well designed and planned so it actually works unlike many other UK cities. We have parks maintained by the Parks Trust and organisation set up and funded by the development corporation, we have lots of public art paid for by the developers of the city, we have 20+ million trees, water management designed in to prevent flooding, community partnership that owns plots across the city to enable community uses like community centres, we have preserved the original towns and villages that were here and enhanced them by sympathetically providing barrier parks to allow them to retain a rural feeling while at the same time allowing services which wouldnt other wise be possible like pubs and schools (had the city not arrived). Obviously everything isnt perfect but its a wonderful place that works and Im quite frankly enraged by this disgraceful video, sorry you had to react to something so misleading. Love your content, really quite sad this video exists at all.
In the late 80s and early 90s I drove a Truck for a company delivering bricks and blocks all over the UK and Milton Keynes was a regular place to deliver to sometimes two or three times a week. As it was in the days before satnavs, if I didn't have town map of somewhere I wold ask directions at a fuel station, post office, postman or local shop or even the locals walking down the the street. I soon realised i needed to buy a map as I only ever found one fuel station and never any shops or people except when you got to the local shops in each small area. The only problem was the map soon got out of date as there was so much building going on I then learnt that the roads as well as names had a V or H with a number on them. V standing for vertical and H for horizontal, V-roads are named as "Streets", and H-roads as "Ways" so I found it fairly easy from then on and as the map covered the hole area and had most of the main roads in with lots of areas in the middle empty so as I delved to a new area I just drew the roads on and road names. I always fancied living there as it seemed a nice open green area but didn't like the centre much but as Id grown up near Stevenage and later on Basildon these new towns were all fairly much the same in the centre.
Yes, the New Town, where everything in the centre is designed with nought more than a set square and built of only concrete. When the Keynes grid system clicks with you it's the realisation that all you need to know is what roundabout intersection your destination is near because once you know that it's a piece of piss finding it on the grid. I just used to look on Streetmap (rest in peace Streetmap, you served me well) and make a note before doing the offski for the day. BTW I come from Letchworth, we have the first roundabout, so in a way we're to blame for Milton Keynes.
I think the point he didn't make was there was nothing there to start. It was just fields and in the 60's and 70's when Milton Keynes was a thought and under construction it was very modern and clean. These families were moving out of inner London slums and they were mostly council houses being built.
The expression on your face trying to make sense of it all.. hilarious! 😂
Milton Keynes used to have concrete cows in a field as you passed the outskirts on the M1 motorway. When the centre was finally built in the 1970s, it was futuristic and supposedly the new modern thing. It looks like it barely made it 40-50 years before replacement in the centre. Weird place. Le Corbusier was the mind behind the projects in Haarlem New York, I believe the architects were influenced by him. Like the town near me Crawley, another new town, but in the case of Crawley, they did not use the grid system so it is more organic. Crawley was one of a number of villages in an area. They just filled the gaps and built a town centre. Now has only a third of the population of MK around 110000. My town borders Crawley to the North, and it has grown expedentially too.
It was built post war, while the economy had not really recovered. The housing in London was terriblle -outside loos, no bathrooms etc. For those people this was amazing. Initally people from 50miles around went there just to shop, or go to the IMAX cinema. Trouble is, it was built with less durable materials. Also the industries it attracted lacked the long term foundations you get in big cities. Without that foundation it is hard to attract the high income people who want to invest in the city. It has an excelent theatre and Bletchly Park nearby.
My dad lives in Milton Keynes, it has great fishing lakes and you can drive fast on nearly all the roads
Yup, national speed limits apply on the V&H roads. The fun comes trying to get through the roundabouts without slowing down, hehe. Some foil you with traffic lights, but there's not too many of those outside the centre.
Used to use MK as a bus transport hub,before visiting it properly,a few times,as a Univ. friend lived there for a while with his family;and admittedly MK is a weird (revamped) urban set-up. 🙄
As noted,from the vid,the original town and nearby villages are now immersed in an continuous 'concrete jungle' ,where travel is done by car or bus,although it does have some excellent cycle-lanes. 😐
In the 1980s me and my fiancée went to Milton Keynes. Long before the age of sat-nav we drove backwards and forwards trying to find the city centre only to discover there wasn't one - or at least the 'city centre' was just a shopping mall. We never went back!
I grew up in Bletchley a small town which is now part of MK. MK was made by joining the small towns Bletchley, Wolverton and Stony Stratford and all the surrounding villages to create the New City òf Milton Keynes
Hello Joel. I went there for the southern qualifiers for the wargames world championships, as I helped out a university pal by playing for his team, despite being a northerner.
It was very different to my home city. The event was at The Open University. I reckon that would be something for another video.
Basically, the main part of Milton Keanes , outside the old vilage, is just like most of the USA.
There's a very good reason why the king, many years ago, was such a critic of modern architecture. Modernist architecture is soulless and completely devoid of imagination. Places like the Royal Crescent in Bath prove that you can have uniformity and beauty at the same time.
You can get to London Euston by train from Milton Keynes in 30 to 40 minutes.
Lived in Milton Keynes years ago, the best word to describe it is efficient, and it has some nice ideas. And there are people; I used to cycle to work every day, and the pedestrian paths (which are under and at the side of the roads) were packed. It was so easy and quick to cycle or walk anywhere, and there is no worry about cars. I used to walk back from the City Centre (there are lots of pubs there too), to my house on the outskirts, and it was a nice walk.
Incidentally, the original village is still there. I took a wrong turn walking home (drunk) one night, and ended up right in the middle of the village - that was pretty surreal, jarring and trippy, as it is literally just a small old village in the middle of the city (albeit surrounded by fields).
I still don't understand the modern "building standard" in the UK, where buildings just deteriorate so quickly. I grew up in a little Cornish miner cottage that was over 600 years old. The ceilings were low and you had to duck your head through the doorways, but the structure was rock solid and not going anywhere!
I live near live in a town called Irchester which is a 25-20 minutes drive, lots of people go to the MK shopping centre and its full but I definitely agree, it looks dystopian
When I was very young, I used to visit my uncle who lived in the original Milton Keynes - the village - it was very small with one pub in the middle of the countryside. Little did I know at the time that it would turn into one of the largest new towns in the UK.
I understand that people do like living there, even though the (privatised) city centre is a mess, ruined by head-in-the-clouds town planners, architects, and politicians. It also houses the Open University which is was a very successful project opening up remote degree level studies to a wider population than was usual at the time. I do think the presenter has an unjustified negative attitude to the town, although he does make some valid points about the brutalist architecture in the city centre
That style, the set-square concrete only build, was all the rage in the 60s. I'm from Letchworth and all the square blocks of flats went up in the 60s, 70s and 80s. While some of the later 70s designs in one part of town that used to have a bad reputation have oddly aged quite well there are 2 blocks on the opposite side that are vile. If you want to know what they look like (and if you want a laugh) look up a documentary from about 89 or 90 called "Love Lost in Letchworth", it features 2 young, erm, ladies from the area. Of all the new towns and Garden Cities Letchworth is the most filmed, it's the most common backdrop outside of London for politician photo shoots, and "The World's End" is mostly filmed in Letchworth (the film starts off in Welwyn Garden City with the pub crawl itself filmed in Letchworth. The World's End, the final pub, is in Welwyn but all the others are in Letchworth, the Disco in the film is Broadway Cinema in real life and as they refused to return the frontage put up for the film it still looks just as in those scenes.
I lived near to Milton Keynes and what this person is not tell you is this!! Once you drive in to it all the walkways are covered over and you then see loads of folk walking around! Yes it looks baron but once you are in the main shopping centre! there are a heck of a load of people and it is almost over powering! I agree you can get mixed feelings! what it does not tell you is this! London was bombed to bits a the government had to recreate new housing for lots of folk that were in London and it did that for all those folk! I don't doubt it could have been differently but it sort of served a necessarity be it, bad or good! Of course we can see it needs changing but we are looking back it at and that is the mistake that we should realise when they designed it!!
I was unfortunate enough to work in Milton Keynes in the late 90’s for 3 months. My first impression pulling up to CMK (Central Milton Keynes) shopping centre was that I’d arrived in a really bad sci-fi movie.
Soulless is the kindest thing to say about it. Thankfully, I never had to return.
In Scotland we have Cumbernauld and Livingston. Both built around smaller villages. I guess they are ok in the summer, but in Scotland that lasts for two days in August, so there's that. In normal Scottish weather they are just clumps of damp grey brutalist buildings, many empty, surrounded by roads. The outlying residential areas seem nicer with more space, but amenities and common community areas are a problem - unless you like getting mugged. I think Amazon sell stab vests, which is handy.
I’d like to inform that most people go to Mk center and it is probably the biggest amount of people you can see in Milton Keynes (there are some places in the center that aren’t chains but you have to look for them)
I am somewhat Shocked to see Tents INSIDE Milton Keynes! ...I have passed through there MANY times with all of my camping gear, - I always pitched up on some Grass around the edges of the area....
I've lived in MK for about 10 years now. I'm not it's biggest fan, but it does have its plus points. I'm two minutes walk from fields, lakes, the canal. This was great during lockdown, I could pop there during my lunch breaks and sit by the canal and look at herons fishing. Or go out and pick wild garlic. When my kids were younger, I could let them go out to play without worrying about them mixing it up with traffic, they could just go out and explore and be kids without any supervision. Our local pub is about 10 minutes walk away and dates back about 200 years. I can walk to the nearest train station and be in London in 40 minutes. Or finish work on a Friday afternoon, jump in the car and be in France, drinking a bottle of red a few hours later.
I can jump on my bike and cycle the Red way (all 13 miles of it), passing through a mixture of old villages, lakes, estates, canal paths, parks and fields. The MK International Festival has some great things going on.
But yeah, other than that, it is a bit soulless. Most things are a chain pub/restaurant/shop. I have to drive to most places.
My kids have grown up, this place has served its purpose. Time to move on I think.
Milton Keynes looks so American 😢
I enjoy your videos and proud to see a young person interested in other people and very aware of our differences and similarities.
One last thing… it’s couldn’t care less. When you say could care less, means you do care as you are able to care less.
Again thank you for your reaction videos.
The biggest expression of Milton Keynes is the University. It houses the Open University which is the largest online and distance learning university in the world. Lits of students but you dont need to go to the campus lol
I went to some pretty cool raves in Milton Keynes in the early 2000's! 😊 Good times!
i live in enfield but ive spent some time in milton keynes, an the video is somewhat misleading, all the areas the video shows are NOT residential areas they are the business areas, the building with exposed metal frame is a concert venue where i went to see MMA some years ago. the huge semi circle building is an massive indoor ski slope, alot of the areas shown are trading estates and look exactly the same as trading estates where i live enfield and everywhere around the UK. every time ive been to milton keynes its been for leisure and ive had a great time, i went to the sanctury in the1990s raving, went to watch MMAevents in the 2000s, been snowboarding there and went to willen lakes wakeboarding many times, its a great place for leisure, but theres one thing that really does ruin it, if you cant drive its totally a waste of time.
At 25:48 the building he is pointing at contains an indoor realsnow ski slope multi screen cinema ten pin bowling arcade high ropes climbing walls restaurants bars and shops .
Soulless is the word that springs to my mind.
I lived in LA for a year when I was 16 & when I walked to shops ppl in there cars kept stopping asking if I was ok ....because no one else was walking! ...I had some amazing times in M.K in snow dome & shopping centre , got robbed in Argos though !
My ex partner's father lived there. I thought it was a strange and somewhat dull place. It was flat, very quiet no variety in the style of houses. Just fields, and sprawling housing estates and endless straight roads. I didn't think it was horrible. It was just cold and characterless. It makes Bracknell look like Oxford.
Basically they used the format which all American cities are built to, horizontal and vertical only, "blocks" like in the states
There's a song of the 1960s by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - "I'm The Urban Spaceman" which came about when one of the band members was staying in a hotel in Milton Keynes. Legend has it that when they opened the curtains in their hotel room in the morning, in a field opposite was a wooden sign on a wooden stake which said "urban space". Literally a space for urban use - a park or something like that. It's s worth a listen to the song as most think the song is about the space race and going to the moon. Not so.
Next time you're over Joel, you might like a look for yourself. Walk from the station through the shopping centre to the tube as he calls it. In there you will find a ski slope, bowling alley, cinema, shops and restaurants. MK is nor as grim as he makes out.
23:55 EXACTLY! This is the point I was trying to make.
My driving instructor used to take me to MK, to practise roundabouts.
personally I like modernism... indoors. Outside should look fancy and flourished with intricate carvings, statues, trees etc. But sensible and efficient roads with easy access to buildings and lots of parking spaces. I like modernism in the home because it yes it's a little boring but it is easy to keep clean, serves it's purpose and can be made fancy with RGB lighting allowing décor to be decided based on mood at the time. Lots of tech inside and a pretty view outside.
I have been to Milton Keynes and can confirm that it is a dystopia, I would not recommend unless you have some unwavering urge to experience a dystopian world.
It is pretty soulless. I lived there for a while. Nothing much outside the centre. Each residential area has it's own local shop and that's about it. Everything else is in the centre. For pubs you have to look elsewhere, just some bars, not pubs, in the centre. It's built on a grid system, with the roads named either 'h' or 'v' (for horizontal- E-W or vertical - N-S) followed by a number. Very American, in fact!
Having said all that, it's nowhere near as bad as the video makes out. It's a pleasant enough place to live. Low crime levels, lots of green spaces and you're always close to beautiful countryside. The shopping a leisure facilities in the centre are first rate and none of it looks nearly as bad as these shots make out. It's like they've deliberately chosen the greyest day they could and then gone for the worst shots possible, in certain sites that are in need of maintenance etc. It's a very misleading video.
I’m from a tiny little island called Guernsey, my only experience of Milton Keynes was driving down Midsummer Boulevard, and the inside of the shopping centre, my only reason for visiting was it was near Silverstone and Santa Pod which I was visiting for a car show. I wouldn’t say from what I saw it was a bad place, but very different from the quaint little town with cobbled streets we have on our little island built into a hillside. I do agree that as you drive past you don’t really see any people just cars. Saying that I do feel that a lot of places in the UK I have passed through feel a bit dystopian tired and run down in comparison to Guernsey (but not all places, some places I have visited are very beautiful), but I guess I’m just used to living on a tiny island that has a bigger sense of community due to so many people being squeezed in to urban, suburban and countryside spaces in such close proximity to one another and we seem to have cleaner buildings I guess due to less pollution, and a lot less red brick buildings (that seem to stain and look tatty) than the UK thankfully!
I love living in an old country . My county was one of the first ancient kingdoms ..Kent. 😊
I occasionally worked in MK and liked it.
I have visited MK once, in the early 1980s. To me, at the time, it seemed exciting - a trip into the science fiction future. I normally love old, traditional architecture, and I hate modernism, but I found it inspiring. This video made me sad
You can't create utopia a new prison is still hell, and the most modern building is just a building. Eutopia comes from the people, and a hell hole can be socially utopian because of the people in it.
Believing we can create utopia is sheer hubris and typical of the egotism in some people and agencies.
I personally don't think humanity is capable of utopia until we ourselves advance beyond certain restrictions. It doesn't matter where you are, what you build, it will never be Eutopia so long as we occupy those spaces.
MK isn't a patch on Cumbernauld, now that's a real dystopian UK new town! 😱😱
Art Deco was the pinnacle form, function plus beauty and elegance. theres tonnes of green spaces in london by the way we have 100's of parks and commons.
I’m born and raised in Milton Keynes all my life, recently moved away
Went to MK a few years back to film people buy wallpaper (not joking). The moment i left the train station, I was immediately struck by how grey it looked - and I live near Croydon. It was like I had stepped into a Soviet town of the 70s, or as an extra in the film Dredd - dated and brutal, or futuristic and... brutal. People were friendly, though.
This is not the Milton Keynes I've visited. It's easy to navigate and the offices are easy to find.
There's a music video for Cliff Richard's Wired For Sound that was filmed in Milton Keynes and even back in the 1980s it looked horrifically naff.
Also, in the comment section for this video, there are a lot of Americans in there saying that their town looks exactly like Milton Keynes.
Also, for Milton Keynes, see also Brasilia, Brazil's purpose built capital city. A New Town built on a much larger scale than Milton Keynes and has much of the same (lack of) soul.
I went there once - never been to such a soulless place - Telford was the same
Great choice of video, Joel. Architecture is a favourite topic, and my favourite style is Gothic. Yet, some of the brutalist designs of the 1960's were eye catching. Milton Keynes (MK) is fascinating, in that it's a bit like “bronzing a gold medal” for Old World architecture. Living in America and Canada, you and I see MK New World type architecture regularly, although MK seems more like a cross between Western modernism and Eastern Bloc Orwellian architectural styles and layout. Personally, I much prefer walking down a tradition UK High Street.
For historical context, it’s worthwhile looking back at 1967 and examining the architecture at the International World’s Fair in Montreal, “Expo 67.” Expo 67 was absolutely magic, showcasing the future by 60+ countries. Its architecture was bold and fun for its time. Looking back at Expo 67 and comparing it to the design of MK is useful - especially since they were contemporaneous with each other. Here are two Expo 67 videos: “Expo '67 Doc: World's Fair in Montreal, Canada (1967) | British Pathé”
ua-cam.com/video/DEly-bm5eU0/v-deo.html and “Montreal's Expo 67 was a Landmark Moment in Canadian History” ua-cam.com/video/P40N4hnHpsE/v-deo.html . Enjoy, John in Canada
Iv been to Milton Keynes a few times and iv stayed in hotels and went round the city and me and my husband had a fantastic time and we live near Stratford upon avon which is a very tourist town which is very much to do with Shakespeare so it gets very busy and annoying but we never thought Milton Keynes was any thing like that clip showed.
As soon as I saw the title I thought "it's going to be Milton Keynes, isn't it?" At the time it was the biggest in the western world - I think the current biggest is Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. Sadly, MK swallowed up a few pleasant towns like Bletchley and Newport Pagnell and joined them together with a modernist mess. It's good to see from this video that they've retained some of their character.
bottom line of why these decisions were made a:"modernism was popular at the time b:the plans were looked at as financially efficeant way of addressing lack of affordable housing then and in the future as population was rising.