Since January 2015, Latitude is working on the participatory design project Ilot d’Eau (Water Islands) and in the diagnosis Enquête sur les citernes d’eau de pluie (Inquiry on the rainwater tanks) in the frame of Les Chemins solidaires de l’eau, a project submitted by Latitude with EGEB and some local committees of inhabitants for the Contrat the Quartier Durable Abbaye (Forest) and financed by the Brussels-Capital Region.

These two projects aim at raising awareness among the inhabitants and the city users about the opportunity to find room for water within the private realm of the building blocks of Brussels. The search for collective water devices is meant to be one of the preferable ways to enhance social cohesion and spatial quality at once. These collective initiatives could contribute to counteract the water risks that since years threaten the area.

The first Latitude’s public action is the Enquête sur les citernes d’eau de pluie, a diagnosis about the rainwater tanks existing in the area. A table will be arranged in the public square St. Denis (Forest) tomorrow during the general assembly of the Contrat de Quartier Durable Abbaye and for the following two weekends during the local market. Inhabitants are invited to fill a questionnaire, to indicate their own rainwater tank –real or imaginary- on the map of the Contrat de Quartier, to express if they have water-related problems in their parcel, to describe the measures they take to face the problems, to tell how they use water at home.