Land Banking - a scam?

Edited from an article in: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/aug/23/scamsandfraud.consumeraffairs1 Lesson:

Land banking is listed as a scam in this article.

Land banking
Here you are persuaded to pay a large sum of money for a tenth of an acre in a field - on the promise the land will soon receive planning permission and soar in value. So far, no land banking site has ever gained the building go-ahead. Most land sold in this way is green belt or zoned for agricultural use only.

But land bankers seize on every government statement about the need for more homes to stress that this means that it is certain that the site they are selling will soon be covered in houses - like almost all scams, this relies on an element of truth.