Anchors to Planning and Real Estate Accuracy in Location, Instrumentation and Measurement

The aim of this monograph is to furnish a detailed and comprehensive explanation of the concept of location in a simplified and accessible fashion as well as basic description of surveying techniques and equipment through illustrations based on practical examples and photographs relevant to the planning and real estate fields. This work is designed for use by planning and real estate students for teaching/learning purposes. Location is one of the most used terms in built environment and its importance cannot be over emphasised, as it is used by land use planners, estate agents, property valuers, property managers and property developers - almost on daily basis. There is a common saying in real estate which runs as follows; the three most important things that determine property value and or property investment decisions are location, location and location (Kiel & Zabel, 2008). But what is this most important thing conceptualised as  location? In other words, why does location matter? Or to put it in a way which reflects some levity, why the fuss with location? In as much as there exist vast literature explaining the concept of location in real estate and planning, existing texts do not explain in detail how relative and absolute location is applied in these two fields. These two terms are well explained in several geography textbooks but without relating them to the fields of real estate and planning.  Geography literature explains the concept of location without going further to discuss different methods used to capture data that is used in different components of relative and absolute location. These methods are explained in detail in land surveying literature that uses technical jargons. For a real estate or planning student to fully comprehend the concept of location, he/she is supposed to read several books from different fields that include real estate, planning, geography and land surveying. This work comes quite handy as it explains the concept of location using simple and accessible language, practical examples, as well as illustrations with the intention of simplifying the concept of location as it is applied in real estate, planning education and training.   This monograph is divided into 8 units as follows: Firstly, Unit 1 focuses on the definition of location, Unit 2 critically discusses distance measurement in the field and Unit 3 focuses on distance measurement on maps. The fourth unit (Unit 4) discusses direction, whilst Unit 5 focuses on coordinates. Unit 6 discusses elevation and Unit 7 elaborates on Location as an aspect of public and business planning and management. The last Unit, Unit 8 focuses on revisiting xi location as a philosophy. This monogram has been prepared to explain the concept of location using simple language, practical examples, as well as illustrations in an effort to simplify the concept of location as it is applied in real estate, planning education and training. By reading this monogram students in the built environment are expected to comprehend the concept of location as it is applied in the real world. It is recommended that this monogram should not be used in isolation from prescribed reference materials in land surveying and geomatics by students who are undertaking studies in these disciplines or would like to further their studies in these fields.