Creative Land Planning for Profits

On October 8-9, 2009, I took the course "Creative Land Planning for Profits" sponsored by the Texas Chapter of the Realtors Land Institute. It was taught by David R Jensen of David Jensen Associates of Denver, Colorado, and is a nationally recognized land planner. We studied old style subdivisions, as compared to newer style communities, discovered how to turn obstacles into opportunities and profits, learned how to determine the optimum use for sites and to develop a model plan, and work effectively with governmental zoning and planning boards as well as neighborhood groups to build consensus. These communities are places for people to live, planned around lifestyle components such as parks, open spaces, walking, and biking trails. Some development types are lake, golf, ski, marina/boating, health spa, equestrian, sports and other resort communities. Development trends are active adult communities, built green communities, and cluster developments. The four main elements that make up green development are environmental responsiveness, resource efficiency, community and cultural sensitivity and integrating ecology with real estate. Builders, developers and home buyers can all benefit from communities designed around green development principles. Some benefits include reduced capitol costs, reduced operating costs, good public relations, product differentiation, new business opportunities, reduced resource consumption and energy efficiency, leading to lower energy bills. As our cities, counties, states, and our country continues to grow in population, housing the most people on the least amount of land will need to be considered to accommodate the required communities needed, with the most use, and least impact on the land as possible.