More than half of the 360 bee species in the Netherlands are endangered. Utrecht did not build a giant nature reserve to fix it. They looked at 300 ordinary bus stops and realised they already had the real estate. They planted the roofs with sedum flowers. They call them bee stops. The plants create a continuous highway for pollinators right through the concrete city. The green roofs do three other things. They capture fine dust from the traffic below. They absorb heavy rainwater. They cool the air during heatwaves. Even the maintenance workers who tend to them drive electric vehicles. You do not always need a billion-dollar megaproject to fix an ecosystem. Sometimes you just have to stop wasting the empty space directly above your head.

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