Land development

Land development is altering the landscape in any number of ways such as:abc Land development is altering the landscape in any number of ways such as: In an economics context, land development is also sometimes advertised as land improvement or land amelioration. It refers to investments making land more usable by humans. For accounting purposes it refers to any variety of projects that increase the value of the property. Most are depreciable, but some land improvements are not able to be depreciated because a useful life cannot be determined. Home building and containment are two of the most common and the oldest types of development. In an urban context, land development furthermore includes: Landowner or developers on any size of project will often want to maximise profits, minimise risk and control cash flow. This 'profit enhancement' means identifying and developing the best scheme for the local marketplace, whilst satisfying the local planning process. Development Analysis puts development prospects and the development process itself under the microscope, identifying where enhancements and improvements can be introduced. These improvements aim to align with best design practice, political sensitivities, and the inevitable social requirements of a project, with the overarching objective of increasing land values and profit margins on behalf of the landowner or developer. Development analysis can add significantly to the value of land and development, and as such is a crucial tool for landowners and developers. It is an essential step in Kevin A. Lynch's 1960 book The Image of the City, and is considered to be essential to realizing the value potential of land. The landowner can share in additional planning gain (significant value uplift) via an awareness of the land's development potential. This is done via a residual development appraisal or residual valuation. The residual appraisal calculates the sale value of the end product (the Gross Development Value, or GDV), and hypothetically deducts costs, including planning and construction costs, finance costs and developer's profit. The 'residue', or leftover proportion, represents the land value. Therefore, in maximising the GDV (that which one could build on the land), land value is concurrently enhanced. Land value is highly sensitive to supply and demand (for the end product), build costs, planning and affordable housing contributions, and so on. Understanding the intricacies of the development system and the effect of 'value drivers' can result in massive differences in the landowner's sale value. Land development puts more emphasis on the expected economic development as a result of the process; 'land conversion' tries to focus on the general physical and biological aspects of the land use change. 'Land improvement' in the economic sense can often lead to land degradation from the ecological perspective. Land development and the change in land value does not usually take into account changes in the ecology of the developed area. While conversion of (rural) land with a vegetation carpet to building land may result in a rise in economic growth and rising land prices, the irreversibility of lost flora and fauna because of habitat destruction, the loss of ecosystem services and resulting decline in environmental value is only considered a priori in environmental full-cost accounting. Conversion to building land is as a rule associated with road building, which in itself already brings topsoil abrasion, soil compaction and modification of the soil's chemical composition through soil stabilization, creation of impervious surfaces and, subsequently, (polluted) surface runoff water.