Land amelioration

Land development refers to 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.

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