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Another thing to consider when designing any planet is the distribution of natural resources, including food and water stocks, plants, mineable minerals, weather conditions, temperatures, etc, etc. For example, if you setup a city, and it's very arid, you need to be conscious of how and where you'll get water, how you'll grow crops, how you'll feed people, feed your animals, etc.
In other words, for every society there has to be some for of natural or artificial infrastructure and support system that makes said civilization and/or settlement possible. Now obviously you don't need to go into HUGE detail on this when describing everything to the reader, but you do need to cover these details in your background world because even though the background isn't brought to the front very often, it has a massive effect on the world the reader does see.
Let's use a car for example. Someone might see a four wheel metal box running down the road carrying anywhere from one to five passengers. What they don't see is all the parts working together to make that metal box (aka car) possible. Writing is the same thing. Another way to look at it is the "tip of the iceberg" principle. 99% is not seen, but it's what makes possible that 1% that is seen.
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