Stress neutral land use planning and development

What if we required land use planning and real estate development to be "stress neutral?" In other words, required that how we develop new land not negatively impact people living in that area. Having moved to New Mexico recently, I returned to New Jersey for the holidays. I was struck by the stress created by the traffic, by the loss of a connection to nature, and by sheer density of the activities happening in that area. I love New Mexico because there is still the potential to save it from the poor development that would turn it into the unpleasant urban areas that people are fleeing all across the US. How can we prepare for new development and ensure that it doesn't negatively impact the quality of life of people already living here?

We already have the idea of impact fees. What if there were impact fees assessed to developers to ensure that the quality of life (beyond just the actual direct costs of roads, schools or parks) was maintained? Quality of life is difficult to measure, so what if we used stress as a proxy?

We could do a study of different areas around the country or world. We could segment areas by their existing development pattern and then test the stress levels of the people living there. You could control for other factors and learn some important things about what people need to live without undue stress. And we could then incorporate that into our land use planning and/or apply some kind of impact fee that would discourage the wrong kinds of development and incentivize the right kind.