Sustainable building takes into account not just homes and commercial buildings but also the spaces between them. To encourage walking and cycling and make neighbourhoods more liveable various street design initiatives have been explored around the city.

Since 2000 Sustrans has been actively researching and promoting Home Zones, which included working with Bristol City Council to redevelop an inner city residential neighbourhood, The Dings. A Home Zone is a street or group of streets where pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles share the space on equal terms, with cars travelling at little more than walking pace. Subverting the traditional distinction between carriageway and footway, Home Zones conceive and define the street as a valuable part of the local community's living space.

Unfortunately they are also expensive, which tends to discourage local authorities from building them. In response, local people have created their own, more cost-effective versions, as can be seen for example in Ashley Vale. Here the builders of a remarkable cluster of Eco-homes continued their work of transforming a former industrial site out into the local streets, using planters and other simple measures to regulate traffic movement.

Underpinning the new approach to street design is the concept of Shared Space, which has been pioneered in the UK for many years by Bristol consultants Hamilton-Baillie Associates. Based on the principle of safety through uncertainty, Shared Space blurs the lines between road traffic and pedestrians, encouraging drivers to slow down and allowing walkers and cyclists to move freely.

The recently completed regeneration of the Upper Horfield Estate employs some elements of Shared Space. This major redevelopment of a run-down inter-war estate has other notable features including the intermingling of privately owned homes with social housing owned and managed by the Bristol Community Housing Foundation (BCHF), the latter built to the Housing Corporation's exacting standards of workmanship and sustainability.

For the BCHF, social sustainability is also essential, as the longevity and success of the estate is inextricably connected to the health and happiness of those who live there