early ideas for energy in mk
Ever since its inception in 1967, Milton Keynes has been a city that thinks differently, embraces evolution and champions change. Back in the 1960s, no-one had heard about climate change, and we seemed to be entering into a world of cheap reliable energy. But even then, people were asking questions about how the new city should be powered, and how should citizens move around the town. Could the city be all-electric, using the output from the then newly-built nuclear power stations? Or should everyone have their own gas central heating system - an idea which was still quite novel in the 1960s? Should there be a monorail, with the city strung out in a long narrow line allowing everyone to walk to a station? Should it be a square city, with Los Angeles-style dual carriageways and traffic lights at every intersection, so that everyone could drive to work? If a tramway was built, would people want to use it? As the planners sat down with their blank sheets of paper to design the city that we know today, a nasty shock came on the horizon - the price of oil quadrupled in a few months, and suddenly then idea of an energy efficient city came to the fore.
The monorail city
One of the most radical ideas was based on an earlier idea for a North Buckinghamshire city, put forward around 1963. This envisaged a long narrow city, stretching between the A5 Watling Street, across the main East coast rail line and up to the (still new) M1 motorway. Passenger transport through the city and local distribution of goods would be through two elevated monorails each running in a figure of eight.
Housing would be concentrated in around 50 "villages", each served by a monorail station. Typically each one would have a tower block adjacent to the station, including community services such as local shops and schools, with flats on the upper floors. Radiating out from each station would be a limited number of relatively high density two storey homes, although the main spine running up to the monorail would be used as a basis for light industry or offices. It was expected that many people would live and work in the same village, reducing the need to travel by the monorail to their place of work. Each village would be heated by a local district heating plant, possibly also generating electricity. Surplus heat could be used in food production, heating intensively reared chickens or greenhouses, or for more esoteric purposes such as heating an open-air piazza or keeping roads frost free during winter. All villages would be surrounded by parkland, with only small gardens provided for the two storey homes.
The centre of the city would be next to the main railway line, and would include the main retail and leisure facilities - a concept not so very different from Milton Keynes' later design. Heavy industry would be strategically sited in two locations, at either end of the monorails, next to the A5 and M1 motorway.
Energy for the Monorail City
Although the default idea was for district heating systems for each village, possibly fuelled by coal or fuel oil, the - still nationalised - energy industries competed with their alternative views of the future. The Electricity Council came up with a vision of an all electric city, based on the premise that with the planned 1960s expansion of nuclear power, there would be a surplus of cheap electricity. This stressed the benefits of clean electric heating at home (at a time when many people still used open coal fires as a main source of winter warmth), with electric transport for local travel and distribution.
The Gas Council put the case for individually controlled gas central heating systems, which were beginning to be installed. Although most town gas was manufactured from coal (with coke for steel production as a by-product), exploration in the North Sea had suggested there could be large reserves of exploitable natural gas. Gas would not only be used for heating, but also for electricity generation, possibly through small combined heat and power schemes or via methane fuel cells. These fuel cells were expected to be commercialised within the next 10 years (ie, by 1975); it is interesting to note that they are still not commercially viable some 40 years later.
Lessons from the early ideas
These findings are taken from the discussions at a conference held in 1966, in advance of the formal designation of Milton Keynes as a new city. Although they might seem to be of mainly academic or historical interest, they have several lessons for our current attempts to design a carbon reduction programme and, once again, to plan for the Milton Keynes of 40 years' time. Many of the ideas of an all-electric city are again being discussed as part of the MK Carbon Reduction Programme, but this time it is recognised that nuclear power cannot meet all our needs. Instead other low carbon generation will be required, usually built around renewable energy sources such as the sun, wind and - away from the city itself - wave or tidal energy.
The actual Milton Keynes of its first 40 years has looked most like the gas city, albeit with electric power supplied centrally from the national grid, using a mix of gas, coal and nuclear power stations. But most homes benefit from individual heating using gas boilers, and although reliance gas may now seem to be increasingly risky as North Sea supplies become limited and we are forced to import gas from Asia, it has served the city well for almost two generations. The MK Carbon Reduction Programme will consider security of supply as well as affordability, consumer acceptance and CO2 emissions.
The master plan sets the path to an energy efficient city
By the time the master plan was launched in 1972, the cost of the monorail (and subsequent ideas for a tramway system) had led to a more conventional solution to MK's transport needs. Planners had also taken note that most people seemed to want their own house with a garden, and so opted for a lower density city with more individual homes and gardens. All the same, Milton Keynes was going to be among Europe's most efficient cities. Homes were to be built with standards of insulation that would be equal to those in Sweden, so fuel bills would be lower than anywhere else in Britain. And even if the planners thought that the best way to move people round the city was by car, they set about designing grid roads that prevented inefficient traffic jams, and supplemented by a Dutch-style network of separated cycle tracks - the area's famous Redways.
The next step...
Once the new town was designated, and the master plan had been adopted, architects and developers were attracted to the new city as a place in which they could showcase some of their ideas. Follow the link to find out more about some of the early housing projects.
