A recent bit of Milton Keynes motorist online anger got me to reflect on a key design dilemma. What happens when you design something but those implementing and using that design simply do not share your design ethos?
Faced with increasing serious traffic accidents on several sections of the main ‘grid’ roads in Milton Keynes, the City Council are proposing these sections have a 40mph or 50mph speed limit. That led to an online petition to maintain the 60mph and 70mph speeds on these roads. For people in other cities, the idea of 70mph urban roads sounds ridiculous, but here in Milton Keynes many motorist view driving at high speed as an inalienable right, and argue that lower speed limits would be contrary to the planned ethos of Milton Keynes as a ‘city built for speed’.
I did my PhD, many years ago, on the transport designs for Britain’s new towns and so I checked back on my 1970s research. The designer of Milton Keynes, Richard Llewelyn-Davies, had a lot to say about the design of the city’s grid roads. He had previously led the team designing Washington new town, and there he felt he had made a mistake in the specifying of high speed urban motorways in his design. He felt they created divisive barriers across the town. So, for Milton Keynes, he drew upon the concept of less intrusive ‘parkways’. Consequently, in the Master Plan for Milton Keynes, the envisaged speed for driving on the city’s grid roads was only 40mph with, in places, shops and local centres having frontages onto these roads.
But when the Plan for Milton Keynes was handed over to be implemented, this design ethos was somewhat corrupted by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation traffic engineers who hankered after building urban motorways. Consequently, any buildings were pushed back from the high speed 70mph grid roads which, of course, many motorists loved. Over time, rather than all but eliminating traffic casualties, the high speeds have resulted in tragically high accident rates. Richard Llewelyn-Davies fear of high speed roads fragmenting communities seems to have come about.
Today, the design ethos for urban roads has significantly changed. In some continental cities urban motorways are being dug up and replace by green spaces. But in Milton Keynes, having established a culture of high speed motoring, there is an uphill task to reform this network of 1970s petrol head engineers’ fantasy to be fit for a sustainable modern innovative city.
The 1970s concept of civilised urban parkways was so ahead of its time that those implementing them felt they needed to be upgraded to ‘proper fast roads’. Here is a salient lesson that progressive designs can be utterly ruined by being implemented by those who do not share the designer’s ethos and understanding.
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