As well as these physical things, permaculture's ethics can be adopted as a set of personal values and, combined with permaculture's principles, can influence our relationships and dealings with other people. Synthesis Permaculture is a synthesis of elements taken from disciplines such as farming, architecture, town planning, biology, horticulture, landscape design, community development, economics and management. It is the process of design that brings these disperate elements into a cohesive whole applicable at the level of the individual, the neighbourhood and community. The wellbeing of people is the central focus of permaculture design.
Design integrates people, their dwellings and the social and natural environments.
Care of people and the achievement of their needs in sustainable ways is critical to the survival and wellbeing of natural systems. It is not only physical resources such as buildings, farming systems, tools and tchnologies, urban infrastructure and materials that is of concern to permaculture designers. Wherever possible, permaculture designers make use of locally-available resources . Where resources are not locally available and where they will be continually needed, designers investigate the viability of setting up the means to produce locally them while importing them over the short term to meet the immediate needs of establishing the system. The conservation of resources through planning, careful selection and use, reuse and recycling is critical to permaculture design.