The Atlantic Beach Country Club rejuvenated what had been a faded 18-hole golf course in the small town of Atlantic Beach, Florida, adjacent to Jacksonville. Adding 178 new single-family houses on 50 acres in the center of the 170-acre property financed entirely new facilities for the country club, reviving the club’s flagging membership. The new country club includes a redesigned 18-hole golf course and an expanded clubhouse with additional amenities. The new houses, ranging from 2,000 to 4,000 square feet, were built by both production and custom builders in a mix of regional architectural styles. The town supplied reclaimed water for irrigation in exchange for an open-space easement over the golf course.
Kashiwa, a city with a land area of 115 square kilometers (44 sq mi) and a population of just over 400,000, is in Chiba Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo in Japan’s Kanto region. Though home to companies in food processing and other industries, as well as a professional soccer team, it is now best known as the home of Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City. Currently being developed on 273 hectares (675 ac) in northwestern Chiba Prefecture, Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City was launched in 2005 with the opening of Kashiwa-no-ha Campus Station on the Tsukuba Express train line. The land is divided into 299 parcels, to be subdivided further into blocks with interconnecting streets and pathways. Initial development is taking place in parcels 147, 148, 149, 150, and 151. This 42-hectare (104 ac) group of parcels extends outward from Kashiwa-no-ha Campus Station and encompasses the University of Tokyo Kashiwa Campus, Chiba University Kashiwa-no-ha Campus, Kashiwa-no-ha Park, and industrial areas.
Accessible from Tokyo in less than an hour by train, Kashiwa-no-ha is an area rich in natural beauty as well as the home of a concentration of academic and research institutions. Creation of the grand design for the project was from the beginning a collaborative endeavor, with Chiba Prefecture, Kashiwa, the University of Tokyo, and Chiba University involved in the planning and deliberation.
