In Slovakia all new construction must have underground power lines. Not only that, hanging anything in the air (like fiber) across the street in all residential areas is banned. But only few decades ago it was common and there are still active 240/400 volt power poles everywhere. The major reason is probably winter icing.
> "I am curious as to where you live where underground is the norm?"
It's very rare to see above-ground power lines in UK towns and cities. You do see them in more rural locations.
(Some UK towns do have broadband cables running on poles, installed in the 1990s/early 2000s and typically splayed out in star configurations to several houses from a single pole. They're very ugly!)
To further add on to other commentators, wooden utility poles are cheap in North America and expensive in lots of places in Europe. Wooden utility poles are made of a solid trunk, not smaller pieces of wood that have been attached together. North America has lots of long straight pine trees to build utility poles out of. European forests have lots of thin or bendy trees which don't make good utility poles. Much of Europe has been denuded of its natural forests.
I remember back in the 90s in Finland there still used to be overhead medium-voltage powerlines in lower-density urban areas; those are practically all gone now, replaced with underground lines. In higher-density areas underground was the norm even back then.
Many HV trunk lines (ie. tens to hundreds of kV) are buried as well, and those that aren’t, of course have wide buffer zones to avoid being hit by errant cars or falling trees.
In the countryside (of which there is a lot in Finland), overhead lines are much more common due to the cost of burying them all. Still, it’s increasingly being done because a few storms in recent years left thousands of rural residents without electricity for days or even weeks – and such storms are only becoming more frequent while our lifestyles are getting even more dependent on electricity.
Burying all those lines is of course expensive, and the expenses will ultimately be paid by the consumers. There has been some pushback due to this – transmission fees have gone up a lot in the 2000s and utility companies are accused of using the costs as an excuse to inflate their profits.
Above-ground pole infrastructure is considered an eyesore by a lot of municipalities, so it's common to require that new subdivisions bury everything for some decades now.
I can see the appeal for urban zones to have new underground high voltage lines (even though it's not ideal from a technical/operation standpoint) to appease land owners, who don't want big new easements for overhead transmission eyesores in their backyard.
That being said, in a typical neighbourhood it's still wires everwhere to the house. I even went as far to drop the little man in google maps and have a peek. Wires everywhere the eye can see!
Same in parts of New England. It's not too unusual to lose power during storms (especially ice storms), but it's typically restored within a few hours.
I am curious as to where you live where underground is the norm? I wonder if they build them differently than elsewhere..?