ABSTRACT
This chapter concludes the discussion of Milton Keynes’ representations from 1967 to 1992 by considering the broader conceptual implications for the meanings of postwar urban planning in British culture and history. The idea of the interventionist state as a precluded political option has persisted, despite some recent potential challenges, and so too has a culturally conservative, immemorialist and canonical mode of defining value and cultural authority continued to shape ideas of who, what and where can be included within the nation. Milton Keynes’ history is located within that context, and is presented as having both the potential to speak to the relationship between British imperialism and the shaping of “inauthentic” landscapes through intervention, and also to the potential for more radically inclusive and flexible forms of future-focus to create more convivial futures. The book concludes with a discussion of contemporary debates on state-sponsored public housing, the borders of the nation, and the way in which political memory of postwar urban planning reflects cultural norms about inclusion and identity.
