On the contrary, life finds a way. unless an area is nearly 100% devoid of water you're going to find some life there, and if it's rainy, something will certainly be growing.
Is 40 acres big enough?
>"The Desert of Maine is a 40-acre (160,000 m2) tract of exposed glacial silt (a sand-like substance, but finer-grained than sand) surrounded by a pine forest near the town of Freeport, Maine, in the United States. The Desert of Maine is not a true desert, as it receives an abundance of precipitation, and the surrounding vegetation is being allowed to encroach on the barren dunes."
>"The Desert of Maine originated when the Tuttle family purchased and began farming the site beginning in 1797. Failure to rotate their potato crops, combined with land clearance and followed by overgrazing by sheep, led to soil erosion, exposing a dune of sand-like glacial silt. The initially-exposed small patch of sand gradually spread and overtook the entire farm. The Tuttles abandoned the land in 1919 when it was purchased for $300 ($7.50/acre) by Henry Goldrup, who converted it to a tourist attraction in 1925.[1]"
> life finds a way
That's not a good reason to screw with it wherever and whenever we can. This is more appropriate to say in the context of humans being gone because otherwise we have so many ways to let life only find the way to extinction.
In fact I’d do some unsustainable agriculture on my sidewalk to stop weeds from growing.