Setting up and maintaining good relationships with media can be of enormous benefit. Effective media relations promote trust and balance between media and an individual and their organisation. Once you’ve proved yourself as a useful and dependable information source, you’ll realise it can: oHelp to get your story into a news cycle. oProvide opportunities for media to approach you for comment on appropriate stories which in turn helps a journalist add depth, by filling gaps or backing up information, to their story.

Effective media relations is about working with, rather than against, media. That’s not to say you can’t have a robust relationship with media. However, adopting this approach gives you better access to journalists when there is something to say in media.

Being available for comment when asked is another essential ingredient in effective media relations. In a crisis, your well-established media relationship can also provide you with a stronger opportunity to get a fair hearing in response.

So let’s see if we can get ingredients for a land subdivision correct so you can do it right first time, OK?

Every city or town in free world has a Town Plan and it comprises, not surprisingly, of plans or maps, usually with lots of different colors all over them, but also lots of words explaining what colors mean as well as lots of Rules that tell you what you can do with land.

The colors indicate different zonings that your elected Council has decided upon. So say, Residential housing may be Yellow; high density housing like units, condos may be Pink; and industrial Orange, whatever.

So you can see at a glance how town plan is subdivided into land use categories.

Just as you can’t build a house anywhere you like, so to you can’t have a farm or a factory in middle of a residential area either.

So first thing you must do is find out what is ‘Zoning’ of land you own or are thinking of buying. Getting land Rezoned is another issue altogether.

Let’s assume your land is zoned for residential housing. The Town Plan will tell you all requirements you have to undertake for land subdivision.

It will tell you minimum Lot size allowed in a residential subdivision. It will tell you distance in feet or metres you have to Set-Back each lot from road, either internal and/or external, as well as side boundaries of your land.

Now all that seems a bit complicated, but don’t worry, there are professional land subdivision experts who will do all this work for you. Depending in what part of world you come from, you will engage either an Engineer in USA or a Land Surveyor in Australia, New Zealand, UK or Ireland to prepare you land subdivision plan.

Always engage one who does their main work in your area, because these are professional where local knowledge is very important.

They will know about soil conditions in your area, because they may have done several land subdivisions in area already and completed soil testing.

They will also know about provision of utilities like water supply, electricity, gas, telephone. All of these impact on cost of your development.