What usually happens when someone thinks of building on a piece of land? He looks for the best site—where the grass is most beautiful, the trees most healthy, the slope of the land most even, the view most lovely, the soil most fertile—and that is just where he decides to put his house [… F]or a person who lacks a total view of the ecology of the land, it seems the most obvious and sensible thing to do […]

But think now of the three-quarters of the available land which are not quite so nice. Since people always build on the one-quarter which is healthiest, the other three-quarters, already less healthy ecologically, become neglected. Gradually, they become less and less healthy […] Not only that. When we build on teh best parts of the land, those beauties which are athere already—the crocuses that break through the lawn each spring, the sunny pile of stones where lizards sun themselves, the favorite gravel path, which we love walking on—it is always these things which get lost in the shuffle. When the construction starts on parts of the land which are already healthy, innumerable beauties are wiped out with every act of building.

— Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, 1977 (via)