The focus of this thesis is to provide design criteria for affordable housing that ensures that a communitys architectural, ecological, and cultural characteristics are maintained. The design criteria are based upon defining the historical architectural character of a community, ecological protection and preservation of the landscape, and historical and present day social aspects. While this is not an entirely new construct, this exploration may provide alternatives within landscape architecture for designing within the low-income sector of the population. I have chosen the town of Bluffton, South Carolina as the location for the thesis site. The resulting designed master plan for an affordable housing community was based on the criteria explored throughout the thesis.