Building Green Has Become Mainstream

"A trend that has taken hold across the USA in the past few years is evolving to a new level. What has been a patchwork of green buildings in many cities is expanding to whole communities, whole neighborhoods. Portland, [Oregon], well known as an urban-design innovator, particularly for its transit-oriented developments, is leading the way again.

The green ethic — energy-efficient, water-stingy buildings full of features that stress the natural over the chemical, the recycled over the new and the renewable over the finite — is firmly mainstream."