The Brief

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. “You feel like you’re in a sort of a secret wilderness. They, for all intents and purposes, provide an environmental benefit, but are completely overlooked by formal planning bodies.”

Just like an impromptu hangout can be as fun as a formal gala, even an unplanned green space can provide the benefits you’d get from an official park: They support biodiversity, their dirt can soak up rainwater to prevent flooding, and they release water vapor to cool the surrounding area. Stanford’s new research finds that they’re also getting a surprising amount of engagement from human passersby, suggesting that informal green spaces can improve mental health by reuniting urban populations — which are exploding worldwide — with nature. And fostering them could be particularly impactful in underserved neighborhoods devoid of formal green spaces.

Stanford and his colleagues zoomed in on Greater Melbourne, Australia, using land-use data to identify green spaces. They sorted the formal plots, like proper parks and residential gardens, from the rest of the informal green spaces. The team then married that mapping with anonymized data from citizen science apps like iNaturalist, which showed where in Melbourne people had stopped to interact with nature — to identify a plant or insect. “People are using informal green spaces about as much as they’re using formal green spaces — we really couldn’t distinguish between the two of them,” said Stanford, lead author of a new paper describing the findings. “But this is not an excuse for planners to come along and say, ‘Oh, well, people are using railways, and let’s just get rid of all the parks.’”

The team found particularly high engagement with greenery around railways and utility infrastructure. That might be because those areas have been left to grow over longer time periods. Compared to a lawn in a city park that’s constantly shredded by a lawnmower, in an informal space species come and go with the seasons: Flowers bloom, attract pollinators, and feed herbivores.

“It means that you can get some interesting ecological emergence and spontaneous growth of vegetation,” Stanford said. “You get quite important biodiversity on these sites, including endangered species. What might be considered weeds to some people might be considered an urban oasis to others — certainly to birds.” Native pollinators, too, love a good mess of greenery, both for food and for protection: In a big open field, there’s nowhere for them to hide from predators.

Beyond Melbourne, other researchers have also begun quantifying these unmanaged green spaces. In 2019, scientists scoured satellite imagery of two neighborhoods in Philadelphia — South Kensington and Olde Kensington — then walked every block to confirm patches of greenery. They found 351 green spaces, totaling 1 million square feet of area, more than two-thirds of which were informal. (Think about all the unused land stretching underneath high-voltage power lines.)

“These are things that the city might not necessarily be aware of,” said Illinois State University urban geographer Alec Foster, who did the research. “So thinking about how these green spaces perhaps provide opportunities for people to utilize them who might not have access to a park otherwise.”

People stroll past some red Chinese lanterns and natural greenery in in Milan, Italy.

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Emanuele Cremaschi

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Nurturing these spaces sometimes means just letting them grow wild, undisturbed. In other cases a city might turn vacant lots into community gardens, providing both food for people and habitats for animals. Community members can also tend smaller roadside plots, using cues like small fences or signs to telegraph to pedestrians that the area is under active management.

In underserved neighborhoods, where city governments haven’t invested in parks, informal green spaces can provide desperately needed refuges for people to engage with nature. But, Foster cautions, cities shouldn’t do this sort of rehabilitation without input from the community about what residents actually want for their neighborhood — a garden versus a more recreational park on a vacant lot, for instance.

And just as city employees are paid to maintain formal parks, so too might a government employ locals to maintain informal green spaces. “Retired people who could use a part-time job, with a little investment in seeds and tools, they could really tend and love a space,” said Elizabeth Sawin, director of Multisolving Institute, which advocates for solutions that solve several problems at once. “Or you have young people where that’s a career path to learn about horticulture and maintenance and planting of trees.”

As more and more people flock to cities around the world, informal green spaces will be ever more critical for preserving that connection to nature. “Everyone’s got this really intricate relationship with versions of this phenomenon in their life,” Stanford said. “The fact that people are using informal green spaces, at least to me, indicates there’s something special about them that’s not provided by other formal green spaces.”

Cleanup is just beginning for a contaminated industrial site in South Gate, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials who are leading the effort.

The small southeast L.A. city was built on industry — in the early 20th century it boomed with auto, chemical and other manufacturers.

That legacy also left it with three Superfund sites, areas designated by the federal government as highly contaminated with hazardous waste.

The three sites are all clustered on a large lot framed by Southern and Rayo avenues. A residential neighborhood is nearby.

“This site is less than 50 yards away from a home, so we want to make sure that we clean it to a point where we can feel confident,” said South Gate Mayor Joshua Barron.

South Gate is home to about 90,000 people, the majority of whom are Latino. The median household income is about $74,500 and the state has identified the city and surrounding communities to be disproportionately burdened by pollution and its health effects.

This site, dubbed the Southern Avenue Industrial Area, housed a screw manufacturing business for 30 years, then a carpet adhesive plant. Both businesses are now defunct and the site was designated by the federal government as a Superfund site in 2012.

The pollution at this property was compounded by pollution from companies next door.

One of the two adjacent Superfund sites was used by Cooper Drum Co., a steel drum recycling plant. A group of Cooper Drum’s former customers, including chemical manufacturers and oil companies, are paying for part of that cleanup. The other site, previously operated by an aircraft rivet and conveyor belt manufacturer, is still in the analysis and planning stages.

At the Southern Avenue site where the EPA broke ground Tuesday, analyses commissioned by the agency found widespread lead and other toxic contamination in the soil, as well as a plume of trichloroethylene, a carcinogen, in the groundwater.

Officials say the plume has not affected the deeper aquifer South Gate and other southeast L.A. cities rely on for drinking water.

In 1986, the city closed water wells contaminated by the neighboring Cooper Drum site.

EPA project manager Kelia Liang explains the cleanup effort in South Gate on Tuesday.

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Erin Stone

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“ The water is safe to drink,” said Mike Montgomery, superfund director for the EPA. “What we're trying to do is prevent it from becoming impacted.”

EPA officials estimate soil cleanup will take about two months. Groundwater cleanup planning will start in 2027 and could take a year or more. The whole effort is estimated to cost between $45 million and $60 million, primarily through federal dollars.

The summer heat may be sweltering at the moment in Southern California, but predictions about this winter’s El Niño show it could be the strongest on record.

So the LAist newsroom wants to know: What questions do you have? (You can submit below.)

We can tell you now that El Niño is a climate pattern that happens roughly every two to seven years, and is one of the most powerful drivers of the Earth’s weather.

During an El Niño event, the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America warms to above normal temperatures. The warm ocean adds moisture and heat to the atmosphere, influencing atmospheric circulation, temperatures and precipitation on a massive scale.

El Niño typically results in mild weather in the northern United States and wetter conditions in the southern part of the country.

In Southern California, we could start to see the effects of El Niño in the late fall or early winter. Generally, those effects include significant rain and high sea levels and the consequences that come with them, such as flooding, mudslides and coastal erosion.

Forecasters say there is a more than 90% chance of a powerful El Niño event this year, and a 70% chance that it’s record-setting.

That said, uncertainty remains around how exactly this winter’s El Niño will play out here.

So as you gear up for an El Niño winter, ask us your questions and we’ll do our best to get answers in the months ahead.

The company behind the Garden Grove hazardous waste scare earlier this year is planning to resume full operations in late September, subject to an independently monitored, court-approved safety plan.

GKN Aerospace employs 500 people at its Garden Grove facility.

What happened?

GKN Aerospace said in a news release that it had permanently decommissioned the tank that set off the hazmat scare in May and forced some 50,000 nearby residents to evacuate.

Removal of the tank is pending review and approval from state regulatory agencies, according to an emailed response from Salma Elshakre, a spokesperson for the Orange County Health Care Agency, which is overseeing the cleanup.

All of the toxic chemical, methyl methacrylate (also known as MMA), has been removed from nearby tanks as well, Elshakre said.

What about the compensation fund?

This week, the company also announced a forthcoming $100 million compensation fund for affected residents and businesses. GKN expects to release details on how to apply in the coming months.

What's next?

At least 39 lawsuits have been filed against the company in conjunction with the hazmat incident, according to a GKN webpage set up to track the fallout. The company pledged to explain the legal effect of participating in the compensation fund before it is launched.

What's the community reaction?

Garden Grove Mayor Stephanie Klopfenstein said in a statement that the city “welcome[s] this progress and will continue to expect GKN to address the broader effects on our community.”

A coalition of community groups called GKN Out of Garden Grove Coalition wants the city to shut down the GKN plant completely. The coalition plans to release a report documenting the company’s alleged history of hazardous waste failures at a news conference Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at 11300 Stanford Ave. in Garden Grove.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States. If it happens, the move would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history and would likely face legal challenges.

Unless challenged or revised, the State Department is expected to announce in the coming weeks the revocation of so-called B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum, according to State Department documents obtained by The Associated Press and two U.S. officials. The action will be taken in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.

“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott.

He declined to comment on the number of visas that might be revoked, saying “as the process will be ongoing, the number of revocations remains dynamic and will be done on a rolling basis.”

The revocations would not necessarily result in their immediate deportation, the officials said. Most of those with asylum cases currently pending would be recategorized but would lose their status as business or tourism travelers, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the revocations are not final yet.

Since President Donald Trump took office for his second term last year, his administration has steadily ramped up restrictions on visa applicants — demanding more information about their social media histories, requiring the posting of expensive bonds for the processing of visas, and outright banning the issuance of visas to citizens of certain countries.

In a social media post on Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau called out people who he said try to use tourist and business visas to get into the United States and then apply for asylum.

“People in the US and all over the world are fed up with bogus asylum claims,” Landau wrote on X. “Asylum isn’t supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration law.” Landau cited the case of a Colombian citizen who came to the U.S. in 2015 on a tourist visa and then applied for asylum.

B1 visas are generally issued for business trips and B2 visas are generally issued for tourism, family visits or medical care. It was not immediately clear from the documents or the officials how many of these visa holders are seeking or have sought asylum in the United States and would be affected by the revocations.

Current applicants for B1 and B2 visas are asked to affirm that they will not apply for asylum in the United States and prove that they intend to return to their home countries.

In the past 18 months, the State Department has revoked about 175,000 visas for people who have been convicted or accused of crimes ranging from drunken driving to rape and robbery, as well as for people who have spoken out publicly against U.S. policies, particularly in the Middle East.

The administration has also moved to crack down on so-called birth tourism, a practice the administration claims is used by foreign pregnant women to come to the United States to give birth so that their child will benefit from birthright citizenship. Trump has tried several times to end birthright citizenship, but those challenges have been rejected by courts, including the Supreme Court.

The State Department documents obtained by the AP suggest screening of current B1 and B2 visa holders began after the State Department received information about asylum requests from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.