May River is of course entirely and elaborately planned; yet there are almost no homes "on" the golf course that I can recall. In comparison to the rest of the development (which is truly beautiful in my opinion), the feeling is quite isolated.
We all know of developments where the home-siting dominated the golf course routing and ruined it. There's no better example in the world that I can think of than Wabeek Country Club, a very early Pete Dye & Jack Nicklaus design from the early 1970's, built on a magnificent bit of hilly old farmstead once owned by the James Couzens family north of Detroit in Bloomfield Hills. The developer was Chrysler Realty which fell on hard times with the first oil shock of that era, and real estate sales took over the project. The land is very nice, and the resulting course is quite awful. I'm quite sure that Nicklaus and Dye would both like to disown it now, 30+ years later.
But home sites do not automatically make for a bad course. The two Donald Ross courses of the Detroit Golf Club contained home sites, surrounding the courses on three sides. Indeed, ANGC was originally laid out with home sites, right? It would be hard to say that Muirfield Village is compromised by its home sites, right? St. George's Hill in Surrey?
I have not seen the Bear's Club north of West Palm Beach; is there an integral real estate development? Are there any Mexican Nicklaus entries in this sweepstakes? I have also never had the pleasure of playing Colleton River, where I know there are some homesites, but not too may, right?