"Thanks for the article! It's great to have foreign friends sharing their view of some cultural aspect of life, that because we are so used to them, we just ignore when we pass by.But how I already participated of some academic study about the Brazilian gates (here in Brazil they are known as "portões", that can be easily translated as gates or big doors), I believe that I can add two major aspects to what my fellow citizens already said here in the comments, that differentiate the Brazilian garage doors from the US version. First, the weather. In most regions of Brazil, during most of the year, the average temperature is higher the the average in US, what can easily explain the "openings". Second, most of the garage doors, seen on the photos, are more like... gates! Yes, differently from the US version, that have these doors attached directly to the houses, here in Brazil, at least on those photos, they are external to the house, making part of the walls that surround the land of the house. You can note that many of the gates end directly on the sidewalk and not in the garden. And that explains another aspect that can be seen on the photos, that many of the "doors" are reinforced with metal, because the criminal rates "down here" aren't low at all.Again, I am just referring to the ones that we can see on the photos and not "all" the garage doors from our country."