I recently found out that there are actually entire neighborhoods in America with no sidewalks at all. I thought problems like that were for 3rd world countries.
So how did you get around in a neighborhood with no sidewalks before you learned how to drive.
Walked. What’s the big deal? 
Walk or bike. Not a problem.
We walked in the street. There was limited traffic, and everyone had kids so they all drove slowly. We also played in the street, especially street hockey.
I was forced to stay in my home, my skin slowly turning a sallow white as my legs atrophied… An entire generation of children had their lives destroyed by the callous Big Lawn Industry’s lobbying efforts to prevent the concrete industry from gaining a toe-hold in suburbia.
Walk along the edge of the road.
On the other hand, in America, the shoulder is generally wider and the ditch is not as close to the road so it is easier to walk on the side of the road. Thankfully in my 44 years in America I’ve only lived a few months in a neighborhood with no sidewalks on its busy streets. So I had to stay on the ample if angled verge on the occasions when I would walk.
About 14 of my other years, I lived in neighborhoods with no sidewalks but the traffic was so light that I didn’t worry about getting hit: either in the country or in backroads in subdivisions.
That said, I do prefer neighborhoods with sidewalks (as well as trees), it’s just where I’ve actually lived, it’s been more of a comfort and aesthetic thing than an immediate safety issue. Comfort because sure, it’s relatively safe because you can hear the cars coming, but annoying to move over for them when they do.
I don’t understand the question.
It’s a neighborhood- there’s little to no traffic and the traffic that there is knows everyone and is either related to or works for everyone else.
You walked on the side of the road or the grassy edges of the roads or in people’s yards or along the fence lines or on the banks of the ditches (or IN the ditches when it was either very dry or very wet).
Bikes and skateboards and scooters and dirt bikes and mopeds and dune buggies and golf carts all went on the roads and people went around you.
So did your shoes or pants get wet and muddy when it rained? Water tends to collect on the outer edges of roads and grass still gets muddy.
Of course we got wet and muddy. That’s why there was a mud room in the house, to take off the muddy boots, shoes, whatever.
Just where are you from? 
What weirdo wears shoes outside when wandering around the neighborhood? Or pants long enough to get muddy? You wear bare feet unless it’s cold, then you wear your mud boots and remove them in the entryway or on the porch before you go inside anywhere. Also that’s what hoses and rain buckets are for.
For me those were the more rural areas. We bicycled everywhere.
I don’t like walking on sidewalks in suburban neighborhoods, driveways every 60 feet, cracks, tree roots, frost heaving. At least the asphalt’s realativly flat.
I walk my dogs on a dirt footpath. My long drive is pea gravel, its hard to walk on. The county road is gravel. Down the gravel road (6miles)is where my mail box is, on the state highway, which is some kind of asphalt-gravel mix, of course I never walk that far. I don’t think I have ever lived where there were sidewalks.
You can survive without them.
here in Lancaster only some of the housing tracts have sidewalks theres space for them in the neighborhoods but never put them in except business/commercial areas …
We had storm drains on the side of the road, and a decent lawn doesn’t get very muddy at all.
The streets ran red with the blood of all the children flattened by traffic. Driving was perilous due to all the organs and viscera spread across the pavement like a chunky mustard. During the hot summers, the stench of their squished corpses reeked for miles around and the files buzzing was a constant reminder of death. Only a chosen few survived to adulthood. Only the strongest and swiftest and smartest. A race of ubermensch bred to rule.
Of the two neighborhoods I lived in growing up, neither of them had sidewalks. Both of them were very quiet subdivisions, in suburban areas. There was little-to-no through traffic, and walking in the road was nearly never an issue – if the rare car came by, you just moved onto the grass for a few steps.
And, as far as “So did your shoes or pants get wet and muddy when it rained?” – wet shoes and pants happen when you’re walking on sidewalks when it’s raining, too.
I echo this question. Is this really an unusual concept to the OP?
Same here. I still live in this neighborhood, and so do my parents. The kids all still ride bikes in the street, and I walk my two dogs every day on the street. The ditches actually are steep in some places and we can’t just move off to the side if two cars are passing us at the same time. One car just has to wait.