I always find it strange the way American homes don't have any barriers between their front yards and their sidewalks. It's just completely open. In the UK we commonly have a wall, fence or hedge with a garden gate, separating our front gardens (front yards) from our pavements (sidewalks).
Our neighborhood has no sidewalks. My mother's neighborhood across the river, same house she's had since 1975, had no sidewalks up until a few years ago, when they added them on one side of the street only. Funny thing was, in the 80s my late father got tired of kids smashing his mailbox with baseball bats as they drove past at speed, so he erected a giant brick structure to encase the metal mailbox and its pole. Because of the ornate pyramidal cap he built, it looks rather phallic. So when the city installed the sidewalks, which of course was on Mom's side of the street, they had to detour around the giant brick mailbox up into her yard.
@@ghostbusterscollector8593 I'd say we have less shops within the neighborhoods here than there. A more metropolitan area like New York City has sidewalks and bodegas and everything builds up vertically there. But in the South we can spread out laterally a bit more. This is a residential street, so it only has houses. No shops. No parks. My neighbors across the street have backyards that face things like a church, an electrical relay station, etc. and then across the street from those, at the intersection, are two gas stations, a mechanic's garage, and a place that sells plants and lawn ornaments.
