Islands
In the neighborhood where I live, fire safety regulations require the streets to be super-wide (so wide that two fire trucks can pass even with cars parked along both sides of the street), and to have even wider turnarounds at the ends of the culs-de-sac. To break up the resulting vast expanses of pavement, we have occasional islands of green, public gardens too small to name as a park. They come in several different types: medians to separate the incoming and outgoing lanes at junctions with larger roads,
barriers to separate small groups of houses from the main flow of the road,
or giving some shape to the turnaround at the end of a cul-de-sac.
Most are ignored except by the community association’s gardeners and by passing cars, but I did find one set up as a neighborhood basketball court:
