Retailers face a multitude of challenges including online commerce with its 24/7 access. Panelists at the 2012 ULI Spring Meeting looked at significant steps major retailers have already taken to reshape the shopping experience for their customers, while integrating their physical stores with online sales.

A sustainably designed, adaptive-use, urban food factory in Portland, Oregon, helps a neighborhood suffering urban decay, foreclosures, and job losses.

The commercial real estate world suffers from a failure of imagination, says ULI member George Garfield, president, west region, for Transwestern. When it comes to creative problem solving, he says practitioners have an opportunity to leverage their strengths at one of the most disruptive times in U.S. history.

The 2012 Summer Olympics will ensure that a formerly run-down part of east London will be in the global spotlight come the start of the Games in July. But the site in Stratford has already made real estate history.

Because of the economies of scale that chain stores rely on, most of their retail environments look identical to each other—but one well-known national food retailer has bucked this trend.

Few places speak as magically to the child in all of us as Disneyland, the ULI 1995 Heritage Award winner. “Disneyland was given the Heritage Award by virtue of its timeless quality and character, continuing economic success, and contribution to innovative land use,” jury member James DeFrancia, principal of Lowe Enterprises in Aspen, Colorado, says today of the choice.

At ULI Europe’s session on the impact of the digital revolution on real estate, attendees learned about the future of bricks-and-mortar retailing in light of “M-commerce, S-commerce, and QR codes.”

The young have been leading the shift away from bricks-and-mortar stores, and this shift in purchasing habits is accelerating as the creators of virtual stores make it more fun and convenient to purchase items via computer, day or night.

“Reinventing retail is a daily exercise for all of us in merchandising and everything else,” said Michael Townsend, president and CEO of Townsend & Associates, a retail and commercial developer, while speaking at the “Looking Forward: Reinventing Retail” panel at ULI’s Fall Meeting. Read more to learn why he and other industry experts predict casualties as well as opportunities in the years ahead.

At the ULI 2011 Fall Meeting, a panel of real estate experts reported some good news: The U.S. economy has rebounded, and there are few signs at present of a double-dip recession. Nonetheless, there are clear signs of stagnation and underperformance, growth has been uneven, and the European debt crisis and the politically uncertain environment still threaten the economic recovery.