This year, global investors should be keeping an eye on politics in China, Japan’s outbound investment, and the logistics sector, said a panel of senior industry figures speaking at the recent ULI Asia Pacific Summit 2017.

Three of the primary participants in the creation of Amazon’s headquarters in downtown Seattle came together during the 2017 ULI Spring Meeting for a discussion of the long history.

Some of America’s largest and oldest industrial powerhouses are moving their headquarters locations from bucolic suburban office parks to vibrant downtown neighborhoods, positioning themselves for growth in the digital age. Two such relocations—Weyerhauser and General Electric—were discussed at the ULI Spring Meeting in Seattle.

Why do cities with the fastest-growing economies—including Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, and Austin--suffer from a growing imbalance between job growth and housing supply? A panel at the ULI 2017 Spring Meeting in Seattle examined why hot-market cities are failing to build enough housing for new workers, often by staggering ratios.

Contrary to some predictions, e-commerce has not made brick-and-mortar retail a thing of the past. Instead, as attendees at a ULI Spring Meeting session learned, shopping and dining are making critical contributions to activating urban spaces and helping shopping centers continuously evolve.

A recent ULI Northwest event featured presentations and panel discussion on what it will take to bring the next generation of shoppers into retail locations. Starbucks and Nordstrom executives presented insights on how their businesses are evolving.

While the growth of e-commerce and the shifting needs for open and smaller office spaces are having a marginal impact, most of these disruptive forces are still years away from having a substantive negative impact on the retail, office, and other industry sectors, said panelists discussing the latest ULI Real Estate Consensus Forecast during a webinar.

Last month, Cushman & Wakefield reported that U.S. industrial markets absorbed 63.6 million square feet (5.9 million sq m) of space in the final quarter of 2016, which propelled net absorption for the year to a record-setting 282.9 million square feet (26.3 million sq m). According to the company, the U.S. industrial vacancy rate for all product types continued to decline in the fourth quarter, falling 30 basis points (bps) from the prior quarter and 100 bps from the prior year to 5.5 percent.

Taller buildings constructed mainly of wood are an inexpensive, attractive, and environmentally friendly option, but current building codes in the United States make them hard to build, said panelists at a U.S. National Building Museum event.

The city of Chicago’s Troubled Building Initiative was selected by the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing as the winner of the 2016 Robert C. Larson Housing Policy Leadership Award, an annual recognition of the innovative ways the public sector is addressing the country’s affordable housing crisis.