Land surveyors are experts in designing, building and managing the spatial component of our land administration systems. They are experienced in creating, describing and defining land parcels and associated rights and restrictions. One of the primary reasons that society requires these skills is to support an efficient and effective land market that increasingly includes complex commodities. Economic development is promoted as land rights and other commodities are bought, sold, mortgaged and leased. Growth in complex commodities offers many opportunities for surveyors. However, although we as professionals, along with land administration officials and associated legal professionals, assume that we understand land markets and have developed appropriate professional skills to serve their needs, unfortunately this is often not the case. There is little documentation on how to design and build a land market or on their development and growth. It is ironic that surveyors pride themselves on working from ‘the whole to the part’ whilst in the case of land markets little effort is spent on designing land markets and the land administration systems and supporting spatial skills to support them.

Skill Capitalisation
Our current cadastral skills are appropriate for simple land markets where the focus is on traditional land development and simple land trading. However, land markets have evolved dramatically in the last fifty years. They have become very complex, with the major wealth-creation mechanism focused on the trading of complex commodities. As with simple commodities such as land parcels, all commodities require quantification and precise definition. While only very few land surveyors have to any significant extent embraced the administration of complex commodities, these modern land markets offer many opportunities if they are prepared to capitalise upon their traditional measurement and land skills.

Evolving Systems
The cadastral concept shown in Figure 1 is simple. It clearly shows the textual and spatial components that provide the focus for land surveyors and land registry officials. However, implementation is difficult and complex. While this model is still a useful depiction of a cadastre, it does not show the evolving and complex rights, restrictions and responsibilities that a modern society demands in order to deliver sustainable development objectives. To understand this evolution it is worth considering the changing humankind to land relationship over the centuries. Figure 2 depicts a western example of this evolving relationship, but a similar one might be plotted for all societies. Historically, an economic paradigm drove land markets. But this has now been significantly tempered by environmental and, more recently, a social paradigm. The simple fact is that the humankind to land relationship in any society is not stable but is continually evolving. Most civilisations have in turn developed a land administration response to this evolving relationship.
In western countries the original focus on land taxation expanded to include support for land markets, then land-use planning, and over the last decade or so to providing multipurpose cover for the support of sustainable development objectives. Current land administration systems originate from mid-nineteenth century attempts to define simple land commodities and to support simple trading patterns: buying, selling, leasing and mortgaging. This could be implemented by providing a remarkably secure parcel titling system, an easy and relatively cheap conveyancing system, and reliable parcel definition through attainable land surveying standards.

Adapting Administration
Countries such as Australia and European counterparts have, arguably, led the world in adapting their Land Administration Systems (LAS) to support land-parcel marketing. Major innovations are copied in many other countries. However, the pace of change has meant a decreasing capacity on the part of LAS to meet market needs. The land market of, say, 1940, is unrecognisable today. New trading opportunities and new products have arrived on the modern post-second world war market. Vertical villages, time shares, mortgage-backed certificates used in the secondary mortgage market, insurance-based products (including deposit bonds), land information, property and unit trusts are among the many commodities now offering investment and participation opportunities to millions, either directly or through investment, pension and superannuating schemes. Land controls and restrictions have become multipurpose, aiming at ensuring safety standards, durable building structures, adequate service provision, business standards, social and land-use planning, in addition to sustainable development. The replication of land-related systems in resource and water contexts is demanding new flexibility in our approach to the administration of these commodities.

Australian Moves
Australian LAS that service parcel-based trading and related market activities were overhauled in the thirty years commencing in 1970 to:

• comply with National Competition Policy
  
• reorganise nineteenth-century legislative structures establishing single-office/single-function administrations (Surveyor General, Registrar General, Valuer General) with modern management and performance-enhanced organisational structures
  
• provide opportunities for more competitive professional services and private sector involvement
  
• capitalise on opportunities available from digital and web technologies.

• Dalrymple, K., Wallace, J. and Williamson, I.P., 2004, ‘Land policy and tenure in South East Asia’, Proceedings of 4th Trans Tasman Surveyors Conference, 13-16 October, Auckland, New Zealand.
  
• Enemark, S., Wallace, J. and Williamson, I.P., 2005, ‘Land administration arrangements’. Accepted for publication in the Spatial Sciences Journal, Australia.
  
• Ting, L., Williamson, I.P. Grant, D. and Parker, J., 1999, ‘Understanding the Evolution of Land Administration Systems in Some Common Law Countries’, The Survey Review, Vol. 35, No. 272.
  
• FIG, 1995. The FIG Statement on the Cadastre. International Federation of Surveyors, FIG Publication No. 11.
  
• Ting, L. and Williamson, I.P., 1999b, ‘Cadastral trends: A synthesis’, The Australian Surveyor, Vol. 4, No. 1.
  
• Wallace, J. and Williamson, I.P. 2005. Building land markets. Accepted for publication in the Journal of Land Use Policy.
  
• Williamson, I.P. 2005, Opportunities for Surveyors in Modern Land Markets, Proceedings of FIG Working Week/GSDI-8, Cairo, Egypt, 16-21 April.