Chapter 2 of 24
Top: Lake Palace, Udaipur, India. Bottom: Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire
Planning and building new cities, like any other technical matter, is at present in the stage of rapid evolution with which we, as planners, are barely able to keep pace. In the mid 1960's there came a deepening under- standing that urban conurbations were living organisms which grew, changed, transformed themselves and sometimes regressed. The Milton Keynes plan is an attempt to determine the forces which create cities and the control mechanisms necessary to ensure healthy development. Six goals were initially defined folloWing a series of seminars: . Opportunity and freedom of choice, . Balance and variety, Easy movement and access, Creation of an attractive city, Public awareness and participation, Efficient and imaginative use of resources. The principal physical structuring element of the plan is the transportation network. It was agreed from the start that people come first - their needs, aspirations and their capabilities. This assumption was instrumental in shaping the transportation network by enabling the car to be freely used, but ensuring that the young, old, infirm or poor who had no cars had a public transport system which matched the car's service. The road pattern is an irregular grid of two-lane dual carriageway roads intersecting at approximately 1 km. spacing. The roads run in vertical and horizontal curves responding closely to the land form within a reservation of about 100 metres which is densely planted. There are two other main structuring elements of the new city: the Linear Park lying between the River Ouzel and the Grand Union Canal, which extends through the east side of the city and wraps around the entire northern boundary; and the three existing towns - Bletchley in the south, Stony Stratford and Wolverton in the north. The city depends on dispersal - dispersal of industry, dispersal of housing, dispersal of district centres.