Increasing urbanization has significant effects on human consumption, environmental damage, and supply of food. As populations continue to migrate to cities more effective strategies are required to maintain and/or enhance the sustainability of these places. All communities struggle with economic well-being, environmental quality, & community character. Assistance is required at the intersection of people & place - where economic needs and desires all too often undermine community and quality of life.

The expert-assisted community development programs of Five E's Unlimited can provide effective tools and techniques coupled with training in community leadership, that focus on the following areas.

• sustainable economic revitalization
• community capacity building
• low-impact development (LID) strategies
• stormwater management processes
• village center/urban re-development
• social and civic responsibility
• relationships and partnerships

In its urban sustainability work, Five E's Unlimited promotes the concept of Urban Design with Nature, which presents a template for creating walkable and transit-served urbanism regions integrated with high-performance buildings and high performance infrastructure. Our work in presenting the case for sustainable urbanism, focuses discussion on communication approaches (and community engagement strategies) to help sway decision makers whose thinking needs to change in order to implement sustainable urbanism concepts. We assist clients to embrace sustainable urbanism concepts at many different geographic scales.

Five E's works with urban centers to conduct City Metabolism Assessments and develop strategic planning activities around the outcomes of this assessment. A city metabolism assessment focuses upon reducing the ecological footprint of settlements (resource inputs and waste outputs) while simultaneously improving their quality of life (health, housing, accessibility, community, etc.). The approach includes consideration of eight criteria based on natural resources, environmental protection, quality places, housing diversity, jobs-economy, access, quality of services, and governance. In addition to these eight criteria, from a system's perspective it is not possible to change a city unless there is a transformative approach to transport. Focusing on transportation can enable a city to tackle a range of sustainability issues together. Transport and transportation-oriented development must be considered as a central means of creating a sustainable future for cities.