"Great article. I'm from Sao Paulo (Brazil) and I live in Australia since 2011 and I can contrast how we use the garage space. The first thing is how secure or strong the door is. Aussie garage doors (same found in US) can be pulled out with 10% of the effort to destroy these doors here published. They are mainly manufactured using steel RHS (rectangular hollow sections – yeah they are bloody heavy). Believe or not my neighbour had his garage door stolen just because was made of Alu – they melt anything in Alu and sell the material in the Black Market. Lovely isn't it? And he was away on leave to enhance the whole experience. The see- through thing believe or not is something desirable in a high crime area – if the bad guys are able to see what sits in the garage area they can "scan" and decide if there is any "business case" there…. – if there are only two boring cars and nothing else easy to get they might invest in another house. Culturally Brazilians don't have massive toolboxes sitting in the garage area or a nice workshop…they know the risk having these tools in a visible area. "What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve" - works wonders there.Standard garage = This terms does not exist there, no standard what so ever so you must have a custom garage door to fix the lack of proper building code.Cheap labour – I can't even think quoting a garage door like that here in Australia…The labour cost in Brazil is so low that having a garage door like that is something feasible. Sorry for my long post but is really nice when the technical and cultural aspects are so linked."