Dear friends, colleagues and mentors,
I was deeply saddened by the avalanche and flooding along the Nepal–Tibet border on August 26. The scale of the loss was difficult to comprehend. In a warming world, as glaciers and mountain communities face growing risks, I cannot stop asking: with all the technology and intelligence now available to us, what do we choose to use it for?
Satellite imagery, sensors, and AI can help us detect danger earlier. But detection alone is not enough. Information must become a warning; a warning must reach the people at risk; and communities must have the infrastructure and plans to act. Technology creates meaningful value only when it closes the loop between intelligence and human action.
I cannot answer this question for every industry. But I can begin with my own: real estate.
At its foundation, real estate investment value is derived from fundamental usefulness. A building has financial value because it first has a purpose in the real world: it gives someone a home, supports a business, enables an education, delivers care, connects goods with people or creates a place for a community to gather.
As financial investors, we often measure only the portion of that value captured through rent, occupancy and capital appreciation. But a building also affects physical and mental health, safety, time, sustainability, accessibility and the surrounding community. Technology’s greatest opportunity in real estate is not simply to make transactions faster or buildings more convenient, but to strengthen the intrinsic usefulness from which lasting investment value originates.
Primary purpose | Real estate | What technology should enable |
|---|---|---|
Live | Residential | More dignified homes using less land and fewer resources |
Work | Office | Healthier, more adaptable workplaces |
Make and move | Logistics and industrial | Safer, faster and more reliable movement of goods |
Learn and heal | Schools and healthcare | Better environments for essential human services |
Gather and experience | Retail and hospitality | Less waste and more meaningful human connection |
Compute | Data centers | More intelligence within environmental limits |
Residential: Living Better, Not Simply Denser
Technology can help us select residential locations based not only on land cost, but also on access to employment, transportation, schools, healthcare and climate resilience-weighted according to the needs of different households. Better design tools can optimize daylight, ventilation, storage, privacy and flexible layouts, allowing a home to support different life stages, including the evolving needs of residents as they age.
Economically, this could produce more useful living space from each unit of land, construction cost, energy and water. Socially, it could mean more affordable homes, shorter commutes, lower utility burdens and healthier living conditions. The goal should not be density for its own sake, but dignified and connected lives supported with fewer scarce resources.
Office: Supporting People, Not Just Occupying Them
Occupancy intelligence can show how people actually use an office rather than how a floor plan assumes they will. Data on air quality, lighting, temperature, circulation and acoustics can help buildings respond to their occupants, while adaptable layouts can allow underused space to be reallocated rather than left empty, heated and maintained.
The economic benefits include lower space and energy costs, greater flexibility and potentially stronger productivity and retention. The social benefit is a workplace that causes less physical and mental strain-one designed around the people working within it, rather than simply around the number of desks it can accommodate.
Logistics and Industrial: Removing Danger, Not Dignity
Robotics, computer vision, autonomous vehicles and route planning can improve the flow of people, vehicles and goods through an industrial facility. Machines can take on repetitive lifting, hazardous inspections and dangerous material movement, while predictive systems can identify equipment problems before they cause accidents or interrupt operations.
Economically, this means higher throughput, fewer errors, less downtime and faster delivery of goods. Socially, it can mean fewer workplace injuries and a more dependable supply of food, medicine and other essentials. Automation should remove danger - not worker autonomy or dignity. Its success should be measured not only in packages per hour, but also in injuries prevented and human capability strengthened.
Schools and Healthcare: Buildings as Part of the Service
Technology can help locate schools and healthcare facilities where they are most accessible, design safer circulation, detect emergencies and monitor ventilation, temperature, equipment and structural conditions. Predictive maintenance can address problems before a classroom closes or critical hospital equipment fails, while adaptable spaces and resilient power systems can keep essential services operating during emergencies.
The economic benefits come from fewer disruptions, more efficient staffing and lower operating and maintenance costs. The social outcomes are even more fundamental: better attendance and learning, safer care environments and more reliable access to essential services. Research already connects better school ventilation and physical conditions with improved health, attendance and academic performance. A school or hospital building is therefore part of the service itself - not merely the container around it.
Entertainment: Retail and Hospitality as Places to Gather
Technology can help retailers and hospitality operators better understand local needs, connect physical and digital commerce, reduce unsold inventory and food waste, and operate energy-intensive spaces more responsibly. Used thoughtfully, it can remove friction and repetitive administrative work while allowing people - and genuine human interaction - to remain at the center of hospitality.
Economically, this can improve sales, occupancy, service and resource efficiency. Socially, retail streets, restaurants, hotels and gathering places contribute to the identity and vitality of a neighborhood. The goal should not be to optimize every moment for consumption, but rather, to create places where people feel welcomed and connected - while using fewer deliveries, materials and resources to support that experience.
Compute: Intelligence Within Limits
Data centers make much of modern intelligence possible, but their location and operation carry physical consequences. We already use technology to select sites based on grid capacity, water availability and climate conditions. We can also use it to shift workloads toward periods of cleaner energy, improve cooling and energy efficiency, and explore productive uses for waste heat. The infrastructure behind intelligence should itself be intelligently designed.
Greater efficiency can lower operating costs, improve reliability and expand computing capacity. It can also reduce pressure on local power grids, water supplies and neighboring communities. A data center can be globally productive while remaining locally extractive. Its full value must therefore be considered alongside the resources it consumes and the benefits - or burdens - it creates where it is built.
What this means for Reml
Traditional real estate analysis asks what an asset can earn: its rent, occupancy, NOI, cap rate and return. Those questions remain essential. But lasting investment value also depends on why people need the asset, how well it serves them and whether that usefulness can endure as communities, technology and climate conditions change.
At Reml, we believe better intelligence should help investors see more of this complete picture. That means connecting financial performance with how an asset is actually used, what resources it requires, which risks it faces and how its role may evolve. We should not make moral choices on behalf of investors. But we can make the consequences and trade-offs of their decisions more visible, measurable and actionable.
The future of real estate intelligence should not be limited to predicting what an asset will earn. It should help us understand what the asset enables.
Looking Forward
Technology will not decide how much is enough, which outcomes matter or whose interests should come first. Those remain human choices. But when used thoughtfully, it can help us see more clearly, allocate capital more responsibly and close the distance between information and action.
In real estate, we often speak about the “highest and best use” of land. Perhaps we should expand that definition: the greatest enduring value we can create for people and communities from every square foot, every unit of energy and every finite resource we use.
That may be the highest and best use of technology too.
Warmly,
