The Valuable Role Land Surveyors Play in City Development

From building positions, shapes, and sizes to road locations and curvature, the average person tends to take a lot of a city’s design for granted. However, much planning goes into a city’s layout, as poor arrangement can lead to all kinds of issues, including traffic congestion, poor population spread, and potentially precarious building placement.

Land surveying in Christchurch is especially important when considering infrastructure placement in relation to fault lines in an attempt to limit damage during earthquakes. Accurate land surveys can also assist city planners, architects, civil engineers, and any number of other relevant parties in ensuring code-abiding construction. Without a good gauge of a land’s size and topographical layout, for example, it is possible for infrastructure to overshoot boundary lines or not meet city requirements in terms of such considerations as height restrictions. Should such issues arise, it can prove both a legal nightmare and a costly endeavour to redesign blueprints or reconstruct built material.

The primary role of land surveyors is, thus, to accurately measure a piece of land and gather data about things like land type, gradient, boundary lines, and surface depth. Once such data have been gathered, surveyors can design various necessary maps (topographical, contour, cadastral) and provide measurements to relevant parties to ensure safe and ‘doable’ construction. For example, if an architect wishes to build a skyscraper, but the land surveyor finds that there isn’t sufficient supportable depth in which to build a solid foundation, an architect can better adapt their design to fit what the land can actually accommodate. Without such information, a potentially dangerous building could be erected, and untold damage may result.

A qualified land surveyor, thus, offers an indispensable first port of call in any development endeavour, and plays an invaluable role in ensuring the safety and efficacy levels of city infrastructure.