This week, Nimby Watch is off to Milton Keynes, a city – yes, it is an actual city – about 50-miles north-west of London. What a treat, right?
Okay then, why have you brought me to Milton Keynes. Am I being punished in some way? Hey, that doesn’t seem very nice. What’s wrong with Milton Keynes?
Well, how long have you got? So, it seems you’re referring to the long-running jokes about Milton Keynes, the last of the post-war New Towns, officially designated in January 1967. It was an easy punchline for a long time, having been built as an idyllic vision of the future and then derided as being… apparently actually not all that nice.
The thing is, opinions change. Everyone hates stuff when it’s new, and then gradually comes around to it. Milton Keynes is nearly 60 and there’s a growing consensus that it’s quite nice, actually. It’s got lots of green space, less of a housing crisis than many places, and it was designated as a city in 2022. It’s got 270 public artworks, and the LSH Vitality Index reckons it’s the second-best place in the UK to live and work. The Times won’t go quite as far, but ranks it among the ten best places in the south-east.
Okay, okay, I get the point. I regret ever criticising the modern urban paradise of Milton Keynes. But… isn’t this a column about Nimbys? Are you ever going to get to the point? I see what you did there. Very clever.
…was it? I wasn’t aware I was being clever. Story of your life, that. I thought you were making a veiled reference to our main subject today, which is The Point in Milton Keynes, something of an icon of late 20th-century futurism. It’s a 70ft high mirrored glass pyramid, framed in red steel. It has only existed since 1985, but that’s about two-thirds of the time Milton Keynes has been around. And it was the UK’s very first multiplex cinema – sporting ten screens and a bingo hall when it first opened. It’s a bit of a modern icon.
For someone who writes a column about the need to demolish existing buildings and Build More Bloody Houses (™Jonn Elledge), you sound quite fond of The Point. Well. Up to a point. Unlike the endlessly same-y Victorian houses that seem to get listed without any effort, The Point is actually visually distinctive and it has a place in British cinematic history.
That feels like a better case for listing than most that we hear about, but Historic England has recently unanimously rejected something of a last-ditch attempt to grant it protected status. That’s left a lot of people usually on the Yimby side of the argument feeling somewhat… conflicted. Including Mr Build-More-Bloody-Houses himself, the previous author of his column, Jonn Elledge, who has admitted he’d quite like to see The Point hang around.
So… Historic England wants to bulldoze a building and allow development, and Yimbys are lining up to throw themselves under the bulldozers? Have I hit my head? Am I in the Upside Down? I wouldn’t go quite that far. Historic England isn’t the body proposing to demolish The Point – they’re just not intending to do anything to stop the developers. And I don’t think the Yimbys have thrown out their principles entirely. It’s just some of the faithful do seem to be wavering when it’s a building that they – okay, I’ll be honest here, we – quite like, this time.
Is there a good case for preserving The Point and stopping the development? Honestly… no. The Point shut down as a cinema in 2015 and has been sitting unused ever since. That’s more than a decade, and more than a quarter of its lifespan. No one can say it hasn’t been given a chance for someone to find a use for it in its current form. The development plans want to put 470 new homes on the site. Nearly 500 homes versus a building no one has been able to use but people feel vaguely fond of should be no contest.
How’s the situation on the ground, then? It’s looking like The Point’s days are numbered. The development plans have been approved (after an appeal, naturally) and the building isn’t eligible to be listed for another five years. By then, the old building should be gone and the new high-rise homes built. The march of progress, as represented by Milton Keynes, moves inexorably forwards.
It’s mostly just a good chance for us to check ourselves, and maybe even self-police a bit, as Yimbys. Most of us are millennials, and as a cohort we’re entering middle age, when Nimbyism often enters the soul. ‘I like building projects, but just not this one’ is the rallying cry of the Nimby. Comrades, we must stay pure. The Point must die, so that Yimbyism might live. We don’t have to like it, though.
