ABSTRACT
Land development is as old as civilization itself. It involves raising money to bring together land, labour, materials and expertise so as to produce a building - which might be anything from a pyramid to a tower block. An initiator or promoter is required to get things moving. This person may or may not be the owner or user of the building, but will invariably have promoted the operation for a return of some kind either in terms of profit, personal utility or prestige. In principle the activity has changed very little in thousands of years - and the same applies to some of the production methods with which it is carried out. In fact it is perhaps the only industry where some products several thousand years old are as good as or better than those made today.
