17 ly as track capacity between Asia and Europe grows. All eyes are now on China’s impressive record of building high-speed passenger trains. These trains dramatically expand the radius of feasible bedroom communities—which can help ease the affordable housing crisis in many big cities. Given the nature of the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, expect signifi- cant pressure to proceed with the high-speed rail system in California. And, if a U.S. West Coast high-speed train system goes into operation, there will be increased pressure for cross-coun- try and East Coast high-speed trains as well. I believe such systems already exist underground on a classified basis (see our Solari Report with Richard Dolan on Underground Bases). Consumer Products Cities mean living in dwellings with a lower square footage. I will never forget my first week in Hong Kong. I was living in Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon—at the time, the densest neigh- borhood on the planet. The amah (housemaid) who worked for and lived with the family I was staying with when I first arrived lived in a large closet. Her organization and management of her worldly possessions was remarkable—it would have made a NASA engineer proud. A global middle class with lower aver- age-square-footage living spaces will focus its spending less on material things that require space and more on things that save time, increase skills and intelligence, store things digitally, or provide experiences. This includes electronic goods, travel, entertainment, and education. Look at the recent Hong Kong IPOs and some of the deep learning AI applications in China described by Kai-Fu Lee in his book AI Superpowers. You can see that the consumer products that are doing well are services that offer convenience. They save people time with essential needs—such as food—rather than focusing them on buying lots of big items that cannot fit into small homes and tight living quarters. Real Estate Companies Let’s turn to an important area of our Meg- acities discussion—real estate. In 2016, total global real estate was estimated to be valued at $217 trillion. “Ever wonder how much the world is worth? Look no further. In a new report, the Lon- don-based real estate advisor Savills has tallied up the value of all global property, including commercial and residential property and forest- ry and agricultural land. By the firm’s count, it comes to a whopping $217 trillion total, and residential property makes up about 75% of the total value.” ~ Robert Hackett, Fortune Shortly thereafter, the research and index company MSCI estimated that professionally managed global real estate approximated an $8.5 trillion value. This is real estate owned directly by investors such as endowments, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, or family offices. “The size of the professionally managed global real estate market expanded to $8.5 trillion in 2017 from $7.4 trillion in 2016.” ~MSCI, “Real Estate Market Size 2017” Publicly traded real estate companies, in- cluding REITs, represent smaller holdings. The REIT association Nareit currently states: “While the U.S. remains the largest listed real estate market (Editors Note: app $1.2 trillion), the listed real estate market is increasingly becoming global. The growth is being driven by the appeal of the U.S. REIT approach to real estate investment. Today more than 35 coun- tries have REITs, including all G7 countries.” The value and number of publicly traded