Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes ^{listen (help·info)} is a city^[1] in Buckinghamshire, England. In 1967, the government decided to start a large new town with the idea that it would become a city of 250,000 people by the end of the twentieth century. The place where it was built already included three towns and sixteen villages, with about 45,000 people living there. More and more houses, shops and factories are built every year. By 2011, there were are about 275,000 residents. (In the United Kingdom, no matter how large a town is, it can not just call itself a city. Only the King or Queen can give it that name).

Aeroplanes flying over ordinary towns can see roads that look like a spider's web. But when they fly over Milton Keynes, they see that its big roads look like a net or a grid. The people who live there call the spaces between the busy roads grid squares and that is where they live. Nobody lives right next to the big roads, so there are no trucks going past the front door of people who live there. So really, Milton Keynes often seems more like a 100 little villages than a big city.

People do not have to cross a busy road to get from one grid square to the next one, because the roads go over bridges and people can cross safely under them. The paths that go under the roads and between the houses are called Redways because they are red in colour. Only people on bicycles and people walking are allowed to use them. Cars, lorries and motorbikes are not allowed to go on them. So people could cycle all the way across the city and never have to go on a busy road.

1. ↑ "Milton Keynes named a city to mark Queen's Platinum Jubilee". BBC News. 2022-05-20. Retrieved 2022-06-11.