Silly Season

I’m a fan of 20th century achitecture, but the government’s decision to make the Milton Keynes shopping centre - or thecentre:mk as its owners insist on calling it these days - a listed building is bizarre.

The owners of the scheme, Hermes and Prudential, have done a lot to make the centre meet the needs of shoppers and retailers in the 21st century, but the listing will mean that their efforts to continue to improve and develop the centre will have to be carried out with one hand tied behind their backs.

The decision by the Department for Culture Media and Sport shows the power of pressure groups. There are always going to be people who find beauty in anything. But whereas most people would recognise the significance of a gothic cathedral or an art-deco masterpiece such as the building I’m working in right now, very few of the shoppers who visit Milton Keynes would see anything of value in the architecture of the centre. Yet thanks the relentless arguing of a minority interest group called the Twentieth Century Society, they’re stuck with it now.

The most worrying aspect of this case is the precedent it will set. Milton Keynes isn’t going to stop being one of the UK’s leading shopping destination because the centre has been listed. But plenty of other towns and cities around the country are blighted by the often misguided urban planning of the 1960s and 1970s. To be stuck with these eyesores could really hold back their regeneration.