In the Hunter Valley suburb of Cliftleigh Meadows, a quiet dispute over driveways has surfaced a deeper tension between the letter of the law and the spirit of community. Residents of a 1,000-home estate completed in 2022 are receiving parking fines for stopping on what they reasonably believed to be their own property, only to discover that a little-known regulation places anything beyond the letterbox under council jurisdiction. The conflict illuminates how poor urban design, when paired with rigid enforcement, can transform ordinary life into an obstacle course — and how the governed and th