1. Give people the finest land, not the cheapest.
2. Bring the water to the community.
3. Every detail is important.
4. Create a vision, first.
5. Make pedestrian movement natural.
6. Knit the edges of each neighborhood together and connect fragmented pieces
7. Don’t forget about basic housekeeping and maintenance.
8. Maximize the natural assets.
9. Think regionally.
10. And above all else, build beauty into everything.
I find vultures in their contemplative mode particularly companionable. Hanging out with vultures is not threatening like being sized up by a large alligator. Sure, vultures are carrion birds, but until you are carrion, they are good company. They are quiet. They stretch their wings. They are expert at finding the best seats in the house.
The black vulture is basal (the earliest offshoot) to a lineage that gave rise to the turkey and greater and lesser yellow-headed vultures, diverging around 12 million years ago.–Wikipedia