Good Planning

I was asked yesterday about my philosophy of 'good planning'. For so long in my professional career, good planning has been a moving target based on whatever an individual client had expressed through their needs and desires. Consulting is a service industry -- while we are expected to contribute our professional expertise, ultimately the client pays and the client receives what is paid for.

That said, I've not given much thought to my own personal philosophy of what makes for good planning since sometime early on in grad school. The difficulty I find now is separating the basic concept from applications of that concept. To state that I follow the tenets of, say, Smart Growth or New Urbanism is to muddy the waters, I think (especially since applications of planning theory engender strong opinions).
I responded with something along the lines of the following:

Good planning means balancing the activities of daily life (living, working, recreating, shopping) with protection of the natural environment that allows a high quality of life to be maintained.

I'll revisit this more in the future. What do you think good planning means?