Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 23:31:21 -0400
From: Virginia Clark vpclark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MOOSE.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: Another Lexical Item
I have sloppily not recorded where I obtained this information, but
in some lecture notes I find that I've listed the following terms as being
used for the grassy strip between the sidewalk (parallel to the street) and
the street/curb: berm, boulevard, boulevard stip, parking, parking strip,
parkway, sidewalk plot, tree lawn, neutral ground, devil strip, tree bank,
city strip.
Every semester I ask my students (in Burlington, Vermont) what they
call this strip, and every semester they all look at me blankly. I think
that's odd, because it is a thing we need to talk about here--e.g., parking
on it is forbidden during Vermont's wretched "mud season"; the owner of the
land/house on the other side of it is responsible for keeping it mowed;
every spring (*after* mud season), the city offers free trees to be planted
there. I would think we'd settle on a name or names for it.
Are all those terms listed above still in use somewhere?
-- Virginia
At 08:21 AM 10/6/95 -0700, Allen Mabery wrote:
I call those grassy strips between the sidewalk and the street "parking
strips". I've never heard them called parkways.
Allen
maberry[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]u.washington.edu
On Fri, 6 Oct 1995, //www.usa.net/~ague wrote:
Parkways and sidewalks
Within the last 20 years after moving to Colorado Springs, CO, I picked up an
extra definition for parkway, which previously connoted for me wide,
green-scaped, paved roads.
In CS, a lot of neighborhoods have 2 foot to 10 foot strips of grass running
parallel to, and between the sidewalk and the street. These are called
parkways as well.
Have others seen this usage?
-- Jim