Dr Ann Limb,
I am a long term resident of Milton Keynes and together with my wife run a small but successful business – we employ people here in our city we caringly refer to as MK!

We contribute to our community and ask for little in return from either local or national government except to be allowed to live a secure, peaceful and reasonably satisfying way of life.

Your organisation and others are beginning to threaten this way of life and I have to say I do not like it!

I understand you have now taken the chair of the MK Partnership and in that capacity I should appreciate you providing me with your organisations hopefully revised thinking as regards the strategic development for Milton Keynes.

As a resident of Milton Keynes for some 30 years I can see only a deterioration in the planning process over the last five years that will result in the 'baby being washed out in the bathwater'.

The past careful, and in some respects revolutionary approach to
development appears to have been abandoned in favour of cheap high
density solutions that will turn parts of our city into future ghettos.
Where are the buildings of special architectural importance or quality?

If you can only point to developments such as the ugly 'Hub' which I have to say reminds me of the worst example of Eastern Bloc architecture that I have seen here in England, then we are absolutely lost!

Cities like Sheffield have learnt from bitter experience that the people literally hate this high density approach and now 30 and 40 years on are wastefully and reluctantly demolishing it.

I was never a fan of minimalist architecture as was the case in our original shopping centre and some of the city centre office blocks, but at least the architecture was underpinned by quality materials and an attention to detail.

These buildings, corresponding local infrastructure, parks etc have a sense of lifting one's spirit and are lasting the test of time – a true testament to the original development vision!

What is now going on through what can only be described as an entirely undemocratic process is nothing short of a disgrace.

MK Partnership and others are presently paying no attention to quality or indeed quantity in the head long rush to 'slap up' housing here in the south east and be damned with the consequences in terms of the future residents' quality of life.

Why are you dropping the superb concept of keeping pedestrians and cyclists separate to road traffic with
underpasses and development that is below the highly successful grid system?

Why are you dropping our successful (UK unique) grid system in favour of introducing grossly inefficient traffic solutions (such as traffic lights) that are resulting in putting our city back in time and reducing it to the same irritating inefficient standard as the rest of cities and towns on this overcrowded island we once called Great Britain?

Why are you cutting down trees and reducing green space ratios in favour of so much high density housing – and please do not say because we need all this extra affordable housing for the people – there has never been so much empty property in this country and this housing is certainly not affordable either in monetary terms or quality of family life. Come on, get real!

Unlike the Development Corporation (who actually understood the economics of development, the importance of quality, the relationship between work and housing, how to make housing affordable for some and the essential early requirement of infrastructure) your organisation and others seem to foolishly believe you can self-fund infrastructure with stupid initiatives such as an inflationary 'roof tax'', spread infrastructure ever more thinly or at best following the development, and even delegate the `housing affordability challenge' to such unelected bodies as housing associations – you can't! This is just plain crazy.

My wife and I care for our city's youth, we care for their future, we care that our children can make their own way in life and afford a quality home of their own.

However I have to say that doing away with quality architecture, creating cold soulless ghettoes, building huge quantities of high density flats, not putting in required infrastructure, dropping sound economically sensible concepts such as grids and local communities, letting the commercial developers `wag the dog', doing away with roundabouts in favour of traffic lights, reducing the ratio of green space and trees and placing too much emphasis on the role of housing associations and developers will turn one of the most successful new cities in the world into one of the greatest lost opportunities.

Please don't let the very children you now claim to be helping, look back at your time in the chair (and in a very powerful position of influence) and despise us for what you are doing today in our name!

For goodness sake let this change in leadership bring back commonsense, vision and intelligence to the challenge of what faces us here in this city and please start to represent the people's needs (here in MK) by negotiating upward; stop this crazy and ridiculous central government approach you are calling `development'.

Are we not worth it, are our children not worth it? – Alan Preen, Bow Brickhill.

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