Peter Bradwell
Researcher
Peter Bradwell is a researcher at Demos. He is interested in digital identity, technology and the ways that information and knowledge is shared...
We spent Wednesday (21st June) and Thursday (22nd June) in Milton Keynes talking to planners and council members - the first of our case study visits. I had some initial thoughts I thought might be worth putting up.
For the debutant visitor the grid-planned streets and wide, tree-lined pedestrian walkways lend ‘MK’ an LA-tinged other-worldliness. It was planned into existence, so inevitably it's fairly unique.
Milton Keynes is indeed a special case from a planning perspective. But the challenges facing the city as it looks to deliver the growth demanded of it – as a designated ‘growth area’ - have a strong resonance for planning more widely.
Firstly, the relationship between 'centrally' designed and delivered planning imperatives – housing figures, for example – and local discretion and community involvement is an area we are keen to explore.
Secondly, in contrast to its initial ‘round’ of growth that led from near blank-canvas to major city, the next phase of housing and infrastructure development is happening amidst people’s complex associations with their established communities and the idiosyncratic features of Milton Keynes as it stands.
So the incredible pressures to expand and regenerate meet head-on not necessarily with resistance, but with people’s understandable desire for an element of control or understanding over the changes happening to their homes and neighbourhoods. Trust between people and their local authority was an interesting issue - one we're exploring here at Demos, too. Contact Simon Parker if you have thoughts on that.
We met some engaging, thoughtful people that had plenty to tell us about the problems and opportunities they were facing. We left even more convinced of the need to express the sense of purpose that planners feel in new ways, to challenge the image of the profession as dull and reactive.
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