Check the background of this photo to see another use made of many sidewalks in NYC.
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Without rear lanes, the garbage is left out front to be picked up. But there is worse, as illustrated in Streetsblog NYC :
Here They Are: Meet Some of NYC’s Worst Sidewalk Hogs
rear lanes just displace the garbage disposal problem without resolving it (eventually making it worse)
most of the cities in the world don’t have rear lanes, and are not finding that as an excuse to transforming their sidewalk into a dump field.
Many go underground, either with pneumatic colection, or just underground container…
https://voony.wordpress.com/tag/underground-container/
Toronto’s Yonge street is like that too in places – garbage bags on the front sidewalk.