I attended a talk by a planner in my city and they explained that the big "useless" lawn area near the downtown is pretty much the only thing stopping the downtown from flooding when it rains, so yeah i don't mind it as much anymore.

Mfw the wetlands make my house wet

Also applies to floodplains.

Meh, just build levees and make it the next towns problem

There's a kind of interesting video somewhat related to this by Vox that goes over how the rerouting of rivers in Pakistan has led to flooding. Here is the video if you have ten minutes you want to kill.