Despite this summer not being particularly warm, the sun still plays an important part in the map design of Milton Keynes, a fact I recently found out by accident.

Midsummer Boulevard, the central road or spine of Milton Keynes, directly aligns with the sunrise on the summer solstice.  The city plan is designed so that on June 21st the sun rises down the main boulevard and lights up the train station, which sits at the south-western end of central MK.  The train station is a large, glass-fronted building, so this could be a spectacular sight if the English weather was more reliable (and if anyone could be bothered to get out of bed at 5am to see it).

Being from Northampton, I'd never heard of this fact.  It would appear obvious given the name of the road, but apparently not even to friends of mine who live in and around the area.  Stonehenge was built using these sunrise principles and I find it intriguing that something so ancient inspired the map design of such a new city.  The road next to Midsummer Boulevard is 'Avebury Boulevard' and is named after the larger stone circle in the village of Avebury a few miles north of Stonehenge, a further Milton Keynes map connection to our prehistoric past.

With the core of the city built on this angle (roughly 45 degrees from North), I still find it confusing that the road references are based on a grid-system with horizontal and vertical references!  A map of Milton Keynes may look like a flattened version of Connect-4, but for me, travelling around the city isn't much of a game.  The seemingly endless roundabouts and straight roads just make it harder for me to distinguish one part of the city to another.  That said, I couldn't find my back pockets with two hands and a mirror, so I'm probably not the best judge!

With several pilgrimages to Ikea and Xscape behind me, the design of MK has grown on me over time.  As an example of city planning and map design, Milton Keynes makes an interesting subject, not least for it's links to times past (it's even got it's own Pyramid).  With such an astronomical layout, maybe we should be looking to the stars rather than 'Starbucks' for map design inspiration!