SUMMARY

An important component of all nation states is building and maintaining a cadastral infrastructure. This includes cadastral surveys to identify and subdivide land, land registry systems to support simple land trading (buying, selling, mortgaging and leasing land) and land information systems to facilitate access to the relevant information increasingly through a web enabled e-government environment. For many cadastral officials and for much of society, this is the primary, and in many cases the only role of the cadastre. However the potential and role of the cadastre has rapidly expanded over the last couple of decades. Most governments assume that the primary task of this cadastral infrastructure is to support the operation of an efficient and effective land market. But what is a land market in a modern economy? Since our cadastral systems were invented, land commodities and trading patterns have undergone substantial changes: they have become complex, corporatised and international. Are our current cadastral systems designed to support a modern land market that trades in complex commodities such as mortgage backed certificates, water rights, land information, time shares, unit and property trusts, financial instruments, insurance products, options, corporate development instruments and vertical villages? Modern land market