Pennsylvania here. I have never heard a name for them in my many years of life.
I have noticed that there are gas and water hook up locations in that space adjacent to the corresponding house so I agree that the municipality is the owner and the homeowner maintains the area.
In fact it is common for everyone to park on your own strip of grass for the occasional street sweeping event.
Generally there is a small strip of pavement running perpendicular to the grass in front of each home (but not all) that you can walk on from your car to the house. In the winter that is where I will shovel the snow.
As others have mentioned it is a bit hazardous because of the animal droppings. Because of this I do usually make use of my little strip of sidewalk that keeps me away from such unpleasant encounters.
Have never heard of any kind of “respect” issues other than special landscaping avoidance.
I’ve heard it called a boulevard. In my city, the municipality maintains the trees. In fact, you can get in trouble if you trim the tree yourself. If the tree in front of your house has to be removed for some reason, you can choose the replacement from a list they give you. The homeowner maintains the grass, plants or hardscape although I imagine there are limits to what you can do there.
ETA: I’ve never heard of a anyone caring if you walk on it.
I never heard of anyone caring whether you walked on it, and in my experience everyone does. I don’t recall ever hearing any name for it in New York where I grew up, or anywhere else.
In the rare case someone has done some ornamental planting there, of course I would avoid it. But not wanting to walk on gravel or grass is just weird.
In New Zealand, that strip, known as a berm or the verge, belongs to the city/district. Your own land stops at the boundary line, which is usually 2-3 metres from the curb. There’ll be usually be a footpath and grass strips out the front, and the path may be butting up to the boundary, but may also be half a metre out too. I guess it depends on what the developer of your suburb decided to do.
One of my friends, who works for the local city council, told me anything I plant in that area now belongs to the city. I don’t care too much as long as they don’t come along and rip out my feijoa tree. There used to be a silver birch there but it split in half one year and the next year it broke at the split and the council came and removed it. They asked if I wanted it replaced and I said yes, but they never did put a new one in.
And to answer the OP, I totally use the area to get out of the car and onto the footpath.
Same here. Technically, the city/county requires homeowners to submit a request to plant trees or put in garden boxes on that strip, but nobody pays any attention to that and they don’t have the people to enforce it. I put in planter boxes on mine for the express purpose of discouraging people from parking there, but I don’t care about people walking in the gaps where I’ve put paving stones.
I’ve only ever known it as the parkway and often, it’s ‘city parkway.’ Mine has a 40’ tall honey locust that belongs to the city. I planted some spring bulbs around the base of the tree and you’d have to go out of your way to stomp them.
If it is like most neighborhoods here in Chicago, a parkway is about 10 feet deep and I’ve never heard it rude to walk on the grass. However, some neighborhoods like Lincoln Park or the Gold Coast have smaller parkways. These are frequently planted with decorative, non-turf plants which obviously shouldn’t be trampled. Many are raised beds and/or have little knee high fencing installed.
Back to the dispute: Walking on it, from an etiquette standpoint, is tantamount to walking on someone’s lawn. I would walk on it if I were doing so to visit the home that it is in front of, but probably not otherwise. I never thought of it until you asked.
