1 - Horizons

Summary

Chapter 1, “Horizons,” recovers the vanquished plan that preceded Milton Keynes, North Bucks New City. In the early 1960s, Buckinghamshire county council’s chief architect and planner, Fred Pooley, peered into the future. Like other planners at the time, he foresaw a post-industrial world of affluence, leisure, and new mobilities, if also one still organized around familiar gender roles and urban forms. Pooley designed a city for a quarter-million residents, with a monorail ensuring free and equal access to the city center. This social democratic vision sought to use the powers of the state to distribute the benefits of affluence. Pooley also wanted North Bucks New City to send a message to the world, expressing a nationalist urbanism that promised to secure Britain’s post-imperial status as an urban innovator. While the new town that eventually emerged, in the form of Milton Keynes, rejected Pooley’s monorail, its location – indeed, its existence – resulted from a contested process that cannot be understood without attending to this unrealized vision.