d

The word ‘development’ originally meant unfolding or unwrapping and was applied to the process of unfurling a standard in battle.The poet and cultural historian Jack Lindsay (1962) argued that the modern concept of ‘development’ emerged in the eighteenth century with the appearance of biology as a science, when it began to be used to refer to the growth of living organisms. In contemporary society the term is constantly applied to describe forward advances and the process of growth in all sorts of areas. Its specific application to land and landed property was established during the nineteenth century when its more general meaning of ‘advancement through progressive stages’ (1836) began to be applied to building contracts and commentaries on urbanization.