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.
Mueller is a 700-acre redevelopment of a former airport into a health-focused master-planned community just three miles from downtown Austin, Texas. By 2020, Mueller is projected to have over 5,700 single family and multifamily units, a quarter of which will be affordable for low-income families. The Catellus Development Corporation worked with master planners ROMA Design and McCann Adams Studio to promote community health and wellness, to increase pedestrian activity, to improve air quality, and to utilize low-emission building materials.
Mueller’s various facilities and amenities are designed around the principles of social interaction, open space preservation, and active lifestyles. Tree-lined sidewalks and protected bicycle lanes provide shade and connect to a comprehensive trail system, retail, and recreational parks to encourage walking and bicycling. To promote physical fitness, Mueller provides sports facilities, playgrounds, a stretching area, and outdoor showers. A six-acre orchard and community garden provides residents with a seasonal harvest. Residents have initiated over 40 different clubs and interest groups and over 70,000 people attend large scale community events annually. The developer has facilitated social interaction these interactions through a block party at move-in and through physical design, including front porches, stoops, gardens, and alleyways in residential areas.
Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood was a primarily industrial area in the late 1990s when Vulcan Inc., a real estate development company owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, envisioned working with the city and the community to redevelop the nearly 60 acres (24 ha) it owned there into a vibrant, sustainable, and pedestrian-oriented urban center. The opening of Vulcan’s flagship 2200 project in November 2006 represents another milestone in South Lake Union’s rapid transformation into a diverse and thriving urban community.
Occupying an entire city block—nearly 2.5 acres (1.0 ha)—at the gateway to South Lake Union, a neighborhood that lies on Lake Union just north of Seattle’s central business district, 2200 represents one of the largest mixed-use developments in downtown Seattle. The $226 million, 455,500-square-foot (42,317 m2) project features 261 condominiums, a 160-room Pan Pacific luxury hotel, a Whole Foods Market, a variety of shops and restaurants, and distinctive works of art. The South Lake Union line of the Seattle Streetcar, which is expected to begin operations in late 2007, will stop directly in front of 2200.
Westwood Residences is a bicycle-themed multifamily housing development in Singapore that is slated to open in 2018. Bike-friendly features are being included to help differentiate the project from other developments on the market. The unit prices will be subsidized by the government, and the units will be more financially accessible than some comparable apartments. This development functions in the context of a larger move towards a more bike-friendly culture in Singapore. Westwood Residences will be located near a new and growing network of trails that will allow residents to easily bike to work in a growing shift towards biking in Singapore.
250 City Road is a high-end mixed-use project in London located along designated cycling routes. It will begin opening in phases, starting in 2018 and ending in 2023. The project will provide accommodations intended for the area’s growing bicycle ownership and use. There will be 930 residential units, 190 hotel rooms, 75,000 square feet of office space, 40,000 square feet of retail space, and a 23,000 square-foot data center. The building will feature a monumental bike storage space with the capacity for 1,486 bikes along with many other bike amenities, encouraging active transportation with London’s ever-growing community of bicycle commuters.
Located at the center of Istanbul’s business and hotel district, Akaretler Row Houses were originally built in 1875 by Sarkis Balyan by the order of Sultan Abdülaziz, as an annex to the magnificent Domalbahçe Palace (residence of the Ottoman emperors). The first housing compound project for the Ottoman Empire, the houses represented one of the early cultural steps toward Westernization within the empire in the first quarter of the 19th century. This change is most evident in the neoclassical facade, lacking the influence of the previous baroque and rococo styles. The mixed-use project includes 34 businesses occupying 14,399 square meters (154,990 sf) of office space, 19,436 square meters (209,207 sf) of high-end shops and restaurants, 23 single-family housing units, 21 multifamily housing units, and a 134-room upscale hotel.
The Pinnacle@duxton is an international housing model for addressing the social, physical, and economic issues associated with housing development in extremely dense and urbanized settings. At 50 stories, the tallest project developed by Singapore’s Housing and Development Board, the residential complex comprises seven towers connected by two continuous sky bridges that provide unique recreation and community spaces. Occupying an irregular 2.5-hectare (6.2-ac) project area that was the site of the first two apartment blocks ever built by the Housing and Development Board, the Pinnacle@Duxton features 1,848 modern apartments, injecting 7,400 residents—many young families—into an area of aging households.
The Pinnacle@Duxton reflects the ceaseless life cycle of the redevelopment of public housing in Singapore. Returning to the site of the Housing and Development Board’s first project, which was built to ease a national affordable-housing crisis, it illustrates the level of excellence that Singapore’s national housing authority has reached. The interconnected high-density development redefines what high-rise living can be with its sky gardens and open spaces, breathes new life into an area of aging households, and provides affordable housing options in a central location. The building has become a point of national pride, winning numerous awards, including the Best Tall Building 2010 award from the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
On the site of a former railroad engineering works and popular recreational facility, Wolverton Park, a mixed-use community with an array of building types that acknowledges the area’s history, has quickly become one of the most desirable places to live and work in Milton Keynes, a planned community near London.
Wolverton Park has been completely transformed through a carefully calibrated mix of housing, commercial space, history, and deep community involvement. The 4.25-ha (10.5-ac) site has 300 mixed-income housing units, 2,787 square meters (30,000 sf) of commercial space, and one hectare (2.5 ac) of open space. All of these new uses are woven into Wolverton Park’s original facilities through cutting-edge design. A number of Victorian-era industrial buildings on site, including three that were designated as historically significant structures, were in an advanced state of disrepair, including an aging canal that has been restored as an important on-site amenity.
Under conditions of expansionary pressure and strong growth trends, the Saigon South New City Center represents a new urbanizing core just south of central Ho Chi Minh City. This new urban node covers a 433 hectare (1,070 ac) district and seeks to serve young urbanites along with international businesses. The new district includes 645,239 square meters (6,945,295 sq ft) of office space, 430,307 square meters (4,631,786 sq ft) of retail space, 3,486 single-family homes, 11,262 multifamily units, and 891,500 square meters (9,596,0236 sq ft) of open space, along with space for hotels, education, civic uses, and parking. Over the decade after its completion, the new district was completely sold and 90% leased with many international businesses choosing to locate there.
Armstrong Place creates an environment for multigenerational interaction in affordable housing by combining 116 affordable senior apartments with 124 below-market-rate townhouses and 7,600 square feet (706 m2) of ground-floor retail space on 3.1 acres (1.25 ha) in the Third Street corridor in San Francisco, California. The senior apartments are targeted towards very-low-income seniors with 23 reserved for formerly homeless seniors. The townhouses are geared to first-time homebuyers whose annual income is between 60%–120% of the area median income. The development covers a full city block, allowing for denser housing to be built around central communal green spaces.
