What is a healthy human habitat? Most simply, it is one in which we can breathe fresh air, drink clean water, feed ourselves properly with nourishing food, and one which does not diverge too drastically from that in which our species has evolved. So it is green, treed, with free-flowing streams and rivers, free of pollution, toxic chemicals and non-biodegradable materials. It is an environment of natural beauty and real wealth. It is an environment where all species, including humans, can fully express themselves.
What makes a human habitat distinct from a truly wild place is that a degree of design and control is exerted by the human inhabitants to ensure that the needs of the human community can be met with relative ease. What makes for a healthy human habitat is when the area over which human control is exerted is minimized so as to disrupt the processes of the natural world, processes refined by co-evolution over billions of years, as little as possible. Further, when design and control is exerted, it mimics the natural world as closely as possible, so as to benefit from the symbiotic relationships formed by species over eons while minimizing the unintentional disruption of these mutually beneficial relationships through the application of practices borne of human shortsightedness and ignorance.
In a world faced with the existential crises of climate change and mass extinction it is imperative that we work to regenerate natural ecosystems. It is imperative that we once again return to a world view where we humans see ourselves as but one part of an interdependent community of life, where we understand that in meeting our own needs we must not disrupt the critical order of the natural world or of the cosmos.