ABSTRACT
This chapter presents two primary themes, natural resources attract housing development and development threatens natural resources. Consumer preferences for housing surrounding by natural resources is common in exurban areas and rural amenity rich areas of the United States causing threats to the health and abundance of natural resources. Sense of place and sustainability are offered as theoretical and practical guides for recognizing and preserving the unique characteristics that housing with natural resources provides. Reacting against perceived over-reliance on production economics, philosophers began writing about sense of place, a holistic concept that captures the many intangible, intertwined, experiential dimensions of place that are unique to each place. Sense of place is neither general across places nor is it a means to provide generalizable information about places, since the concept implies that places are unique. The romanticism many associate with rural places and small towns, something often reflected in the conservatism of new residents, creates problems.
