It's my home and I love it! (Milton Keynes in General)

Member Name: Vialdana

Product:	Milton Keynes in General
Date:	17/07/09 (218 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Big city resources and small town values

Disadvantages: Not to everyone's taste

Milton Keynes is a fantastic place to live! I know there are a lot of people who slate it, but I've lived here for 26 years and I have to say I love it. I've watched it grow from a 'new town' with small trees and bright new brickwork to a proper 'city' that's thriving and bustling with people and businesses, has mature trees and buildings, and is all grown up. Actually technically Milton Keynes isn't a city at all, we've never been granted City status so we're still only a town, even though we've as many people as most Cities do, and as much to do here if not more than many cities have.

The place IS quite different to what people expect from a City (or even very large town), the area is laid out in a grid pattern with H roads (horizontal roads), and V roads (vertical roads). In each grid square is an estate, some of which are purely residential and others are purely business, with some being a mixture of both. The grid road system makes it much easier to navigate the town than most places, and we rarely get bad traffic jams as at each intersection you can opt to take a slightly different route and avoid the worst of any traffic that may be there. All the intersections (well most of them), have roundabouts which means that the flow of traffic is much easier than if we had loads of traffic lights everywhere.

MK is a very green city too, When you travel the grid roads you don't see a lot of houses as there are wide grass verges with trees and bushes between you and each estate. We also have a good amount of countryside that creeps and meanders around the edges and even into the middle in places which again goes to make it feel less like a city and more like a series of small towns and villages all joined together, which in turn makes it feel much friendlier than most cities.

The central area of the town has a major shopping centre at its heart, in terms of it's size and what shops we have, it rivals anything that Bluewater or Thurrock Lakeside can offer, and it's much easier to get to as it's in a town rather than out in the middle of nowhere all the big names in shops are here, and the place is popular for shopping particularly at Christmas time. We've got a theatre district in the town centre too, where there's a big national theatre, an art gallery, a couple of cinemas, and loads of bar's and restaurants. Just down the other end of the town centre is another area for eateries which has become quite trendy and hip since it opened. Most of the big bar and restaurant chains can be found there, and it's a pretty fab place to meet friends as there's so much choice.

There is so much to do here in MK, which I think is why many people like to come here to visit, as well as everything I've mentioned above we've got ice-skating, bowling, a football team with a pretty decent brand new stadium, a national hockey stadium, waterskiing, one of the best lakes in this part of the country for seeing water birds, a vast expanse of open spaces and parklands, a nationally renowned open air concert stadium (The Milton Keynes Bowl), and even a snow dome with a real snow slope.

I know a lot of people hear 'Milton Keynes' and think 'Concrete Cows' but they're just stuck in a field off to the edge of town and aren't really that impressive. What is much more impressive is some of the sculptures that are dotted throughout the city from the statue of two whispering girls outside the library to a giant book with a ball and chain attached to it which forms a bench in Midsummer Place outside (aptly enough) a bookshop.

Yes the place has it's areas that are a bit less pleasant or pretty, but what town or city doesn't have those, and to be honest, the estates that are considered 'rough' here are nothing like as bad as some of the reasonable areas of London in my book.

MK is really friendly too, it's not like London where no one talks to each other, here you know your neighbours and have a local pub you go to. People chat with each other in the post office queues, and we don't have the aggression problems that many cities seem to have. I love this place and I'm proud to call it home. To me it shows what a city can really be if it's given a bit of tlc and encouragement to grow in the right direction, instead of being neglected and left to grow old and dowdy.

Summary: A fab mix of big city and small town with some decent greenary thrown in for good measure.