We use the results of a high-resolution N -body simulation to investigate the role of the environment on the formation and evolution of galaxy-sized haloes. Starting from a set of constrained initial conditions, we have produced a final configuration hosting a double cluster in one octant and a large void extending over two octants of the simulation box. In this paper we concentrate on gravitationally bound galaxy-sized haloes extracted from these two regions and from a third region hosting a single, relaxed cluster without substructure. Exploiting the high mass resolution of our simulation (m body =2.1 7109 h -1 Msolar ), we construct halo samples probing more than two decades in mass, starting from a rather small mass threshold: 5 71010 h...