Human ability to adapt to shifting ecological regimes is tied to flexibility in our senses of place to engage and expand spatial and temporal scales. The challenge of regional conservation is to build intelligible senses of place from a mosaic of land uses that seemingly compete with one another and have difficulties scaling-up to characterise a regional geography. A regional place-making framework is developed that connects ecological relationships, structural forces of society and socio-cultural meanings in ways that negotiate tension between narratives of stability and change. Place-making asserts change as aspirational narratives of what should be, and inclusion of a temporal scale that recognises future states of conditions and relationships across communities. Place-making asserts stability due to concerns for restoring native ecosystems and production of socio-cultural heritage. Regional place-making is where global narratives meet local particularities in ways that integrate and prioritise narratives linked to stability and change.

Chapter 1, “Horizons,” recovers the vanquished plan that preceded Milton Keynes, North Bucks New City. In the early 1960s, Buckinghamshire county council’s chief architect and planner, Fred Pooley, peered into the future. Like other planners at the time, he foresaw a post-industrial world of affluence, leisure, and new mobilities, if also one still organized around familiar gender roles and urban forms. Pooley designed a city for a quarter-million residents, with a monorail ensuring free and equal access to the city center. This social democratic vision sought to use the powers of the state to distribute the benefits of affluence. Pooley also wanted North Bucks New City to send a message to the world, expressing a nationalist urbanism that promised to secure Britain’s post-imperial status as an urban innovator. While the new town that eventually emerged, in the form of Milton Keynes, rejected Pooley’s monorail, its location – indeed, its existence – resulted from a contested process that cannot be understood without attending to this unrealized vision.