Interestingly, in the area of Iowa and Minnesota where I grew up, where a lot of the towns were founded just after the Civil War, the shops on main street were mostly brick storefront on the ground level, with residence above. Very few shop owners live in the apartment these days, for more than the last 50 years the apartments were rented out, usually quite cheaply.

I did have one friend that ran a shop and lived above -- it seemed great -- but he owned the building and had done a lot of modernizing of the apartment. It doesn't fit the suburban dream, though. No yard -- the green space for my friend was the county court house square across main street from his shop.

I think many older North American cities have these features

Ottawa, Canada has these too on Bank St. Toronto has many of these streets also, for example Queen West. These are generally the most vibrant neighborhoods.

The solution to having lack of backyard space is to have public parks. Montreal has this more right than any other city I’ve seen.

Exactly. That’s partly why I love living in Vietnam. The neighborhoods are so vibrant and full of life. Everyone is out on the stoop. Neighbors all know each other and buy from each other.

Of course, from my apartment I hear karaoke late at night, roosters early in the morning, and construction, always construction.

So there are drawbacks. It would be disruptive, especially in suburbia. But I would love some middle ground between crazy Saigon and cultural desert suburban Atlanta.

Even Tokyo works a lot more like this. It's a beautiful mess, but in addition it has some of the best public infrastructure.

I’m in Da Nang myself at the moment :D

Where do all these roosters live? I kept an eye out for them wherever I went in Da nang, but I never saw any of these roosters. Definitely heard them every dawn though.