Milton Keynes Development Corporation

Situated in the north of Buckinghamshire near the borders with Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire, it would be a "city in the trees" – the planning guideline for residential areas outside Central Milton Keynes was "no building higher than the highest tree" – at a time when multi-storey flats and office blocks were dominating the redevelopment of most inner city areas and many large towns.

[3][4][a] The aims that MKDC set out in The Plan for Milton Keynes implied that the designers would learn from the mistakes made in the earlier new towns and build a city that people would be proud to call their home.

The Board invited as consultants Richard Llewellyn Davies and partners, who produced the overall development plan,[9] with its grid pattern of distributor roads at roughly 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) intervals.

The Government wound up MKDC in 1992 after 25 years, transferring control to the Commission for New Towns, latterly part of English Partnerships, which subsequently merged with the Housing Corporation to become the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA).

Control over design passed to Milton Keynes Partnership which remained a major landowner in the city.