Contrary to a possible misconception, Milton Keynes was not named after the poet John Milton and the economist John Maynard Keynes: it was instead named after a village that already existed on the site of the proposed new town. The village was renamed Middleton in 1991, to distinguish it from the town.

Milton Keynes is in the Guinness Book of Records 2001 for having the longest shopping mall, at 720m long. It also has Europe's largest indoor ski slope, with real snow. Milton Keynes is the home of the Open University, the National Badminton Centre and the National Hockey Stadium, which is home to now home Wimbledon F.C.

The town's layout was planned on the basis of a prediction of a high level of car ownership by its inhabitants. The road scheme is based on a wide grid of "horizontal" (H) and "vertical" (V) roads, intersecting in many roundabouts of similar design. The famous concrete cows, life-sized, painted statues which are intended to convey a pastoral impression to onlookers, and may be interpreted as a satirical commentary on the modernist ideals of the new town developments are, like everything else in the town, located close to one of these roundabouts.

Within the spaces between these major "H" and "V" roads, there is a variety of styles of development, ranging from normal urban developement and industrial parks, to "village" developments.

Table of contents

1 Local Cultural Groups 2 Nearby settlements 3 Milton Keynes in popular culture 4 External links

Local Cultural Groups

• Junktion14

• Cities - Birmingham, Cambridge, Coventry, London, Oxford, Peterborough
• Towns - Aylesbury, Banbury, Bedford, Bicester, Bletchley, Buckingham, Dunstable, Letchworth, Luton, Newport Pagnell, Northampton, Rugby, Rushden, Stony Stratford, Wellingborough, Woburn Sands, Wolverton, Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes is parodied as "Milton Springsteen: It's Quite Nice, Really!" in Alexei Sayle's book Train To Hell. Rather than concrete cows, Milton Springsteen features "android yokels."

External links