The delight — and power — of unplanned urban green spaces

You may not have noticed it, but a butterfly or bee certainly has. It’s a strip of dirt and grass between a sidewalk and a street, or an empty lot, or greenery running along a railway. Compared to an official city park, these “informal green spaces” don’t get much love from humans, even though they serve as invaluable sanctuaries for pollinators and other urban species.

“They’re the sort of forgotten, unconsidered places, unplanned spaces,” said Hugh Stanford, an urban sustainability researcher at RMIT University in Australia.