Who We Are

What is RPI?

The Range of RPI: RPI covers multiple social and environmental dimensions of real estate investment, including:

  • Smart Growth (e.g., transit-oriented development, walkable communities, mixed-use development)
  • Social Equity and Community Development (e.g., affordable housing, community outreach, fair labor practices, workforce development)
  • Urban Revitalization (e.g. goods and services provided to underserved communities, infill development, flexible interiors, brownfield redevelopment)
  • Energy Conservation (e.g. energy efficient buildings, conservation retrofitting, green power generation and purchasing)
  • Environmental Protection (e.g., water conservation, recycling, habitat protection)
  • Worker Well-Being (e.g., plazas, indoor air quality, childcare on premises, handicapped access)
  • Health and Safety (e.g., property security, avoiding hazards, first aid readiness).
  • Local Citizenship (e.g. aesthetics, minimum neighborhood impacts, considerate construction, stakeholder engagement, historical preservation)
  • Corporate Citizenship (e.g., regulatory compliance, sustainability disclosure, independent directors, and adoption of independent voluntary codes such as LEED, Energy Star, Green Seal, UN Principles for Responsible Investment, and Global Reporting Initiative.)

The wide range of issues reflects the enormous impact that real estate has on the way people live. Across these dimensions, investors can identify opportunities for superior performance in the construction and management of buildings. Each dimension offers the potential to assess a particular element of long-term value at the level of individual properties or whole portfolios.

RPI offers a tool to assess key risks and opportunities in areas that are too often overlooked in today’s short-term focused real estate investment practices – it helps investors anticipate changes in the consumer, investment, and regulatory arenas. Over the long-term, RPI can help create institutional competitive advantage both through better management of risks and opportunities, and also through enhanced reputation.

Because of its focus on the long-term effects of property investment, RPI creates value not only for investors, but for the communities and people most affected by their investments.

The RPIC is directed by Professor Gary Pivo of the University of Arizona, and David Wood of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.  For more information please contact David Wood at or Gary Pivo at .