The environmental planner and designer bring aspects of the natural and health services to the plan process. This means that the planner and designer must develop plans and land use regulations that will serve two broad goals: First, to protect people and property from natural and man-made hazards; second, to protect natural and man-made values.

A hazard is a natural or man-made feature or process that threatens the health, safety, and welfare of people or their property.

A value is a natural or man-made feature or process that enhances the health, safety, and welfare of people or their property.

The Advantages: Agriculture may be practiced on land that is fertile, tillable, moist, and well drained is suited, other things being equal, to agricultural uses. Properly conducted, agriculture may be practiced on such land without degrading it, while at the same time, maximizing its productive value. Such land exhibits important environmental values and, as such, ought to be protected from land uses that do not maintain or protect these environmental values.

The Challenges: Yet, the subdivision also sets the stage for long-term, protracted land use conflicts between residents of the subdivision and nearby farmers. Farmers find themselves victimized in increases in theft and vandalism of crops, equipment, and buildings. They may also experience damage to farm animals, cut fences, subdivision gardens creeping into farm fields, midnight dumping of trash in fields, children converting cultivated earth into play areas, and sundry other troubles that lower productive values of the land.

For the new suburbanites, who love the idea of agriculture but loathe its practice, another set of problem emerges. Agriculture proves to have a number of characteristics in common with heavy industry at times – twenty-four-hour operations, heavy equipment, noise, dust, odors, and applications of pesticides, fertilizers, and insecticides. Some of these agricultural practices are hazardous to the health of the subdivision residents.

The Design Techniques for the Featured Plan: scale and proportion, focal points, water, garden rooms, creating privacy and height, pathways, sitting areas, and garden structures.