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A well preserved traditional street in a samurai class neighborhood, Kanazawa, Japan. The walls surrounding the homes are considerably thicker than normal, with sturdy gates. Narrow, sharply turning streets for defensibility and to confuse enemies having breached the town walls. 
A seasonal touch are the handmade rice straw mats hung up to protect the walls from snow and ice. When you first see them in December you know that winter is coming. The samurai neighborhood is a superb example of vernacular #GoodUrbanism
It looks like a densely populated urban villa district but if you peak over the walls you can find some very wild looking gardens. This is a real urban oasis. #GoodUrbanism
Even smaller residences with less space for gardens could create pocket gardens (in the place were Westerners would put a courtyard, but in miniature). These gardens are not to use but purely decorative.
"You can not have a garden without fences" is a well known aphorism. Likewise a home requires a wall, a good neighborhood is similarly defined by walls or gates, and the traditional samurai neighborhood often had moats to supplement the walls and further differentiate it.
The gates to individual residences could be grand affairs (although these emphasize sturdiness against attack rather than elegance or refined taste), only to be opened to special guests or during religious ceremonies. For everyday use you stooped through one of the side doors.
Some residences needed a more convenient entrance to a side street to avoid making long detours, or as entrances to trusted servants and tradesmen you would not want trudging through the house. This door must have been used by the gardener and the farmers collecting nightsoil.
Civil consideration was necessary when living in streets like this. After nightfall residential areas would be quiet. The only sound commonly heard would've been the fire patrols reminding people to be careful with fires. Here is is one in modern Tokyo.
Bonus: If you live in an area with plenty of ground water like Kanazawa (famous as the birthplace of fountains in Japan) you can very easily create attractive water features in your garden, like these artesian wells (where water spouts from natural pressure rather than pumps).
Any place that takes pride in their annual public rituals, no matter how mundane, soon becomes charming tourist attractions. The yearly cladding of the walls with rice straw is followed by hundreds of locals and tourists, as is the removal of them comes spring. #GoodUrbanism
