Crossroads

I read the Crossroads blog from December the third last year. It is the one about LEED, the new neighborhood design trend. There are two of these projects in Memphis, University Place and Legends Park. They are mixed income housing projects containing senior housing, multi-family rental and single family owner occupied units. It seems from what I got from this blog is that this project is about the concept of green building. I think it is a great idea and I hope that can make it work. Maybe it will really catch on.
My real concern, is will they make it affordable? Not just this project, but others, even those that are not mixed income. It seems these days that if you attach the labels of "green", "organic" or "eco-friendly" to anything it just shoots the cost up out of your average buyer's reach. This applies to food, cleaning products, etc.. The makers of these products have used these terms to add extra cost to the product. Families struggle a lot of the time to make ends meet and if faced with saving money or being eco-friendly the average family is going to go for saving money. They really can't afford to be eco-friendly, especially in the present economy.
If product manufacturers of green products would work on making their product more affordable more people would buy it. The same school of thought goes for green builders.