is is our first venture into green affordable housing, and the lesson is that we can do economic development with respect for people and the environment and do it economically," says Pamela Flaherty, senior vice president of global community relations at Citigroup. "The secret objective is much broader, which is to transform the whole affordable- housing infrastructure across the country."
If history is a guide, that could be possible. Back in the 1970s, when the alternative energy movement in construction began, there were no standards for how well a house should be insulated. Now, they're generally established.
"In each decade, there are some things that become so incorporated in the mainstream they're hardly talked about anymore, like minimum levels of insulation in homes," says Rick Schwolsky, an early advocate of green building and now editor in chief of two construction trade magazines.
For many in the movement, the hope is that ultimately green becomes the norm. "That's the ambition, that green building as a concept disappears and becomes part of regular, mainstream architectural practice," says Jack Elliot of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "In a world with diminishing resources and rising expectation, I think it's inevitable."