Kickstands are, to me, a barometer which indicates to what extent bicycles permeate a given culture.  In a country where millions of bikes are on the road (e.g., India and China), can you imagine the chaos if every cyclist tried to lean their bike up against a wall/shop window/sign post?  Our own downtown bike racks are unsecure, to which anyone who has found their bikes cannibalized will attest.  Instead, bike parking lots exist elsewhere, where one parks a bike with a kickstand in rows, just like cars, locks the wheel, and it's watched-over by an attendant until it's re-claimed at the end

A loop up to Texel Island before Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany.