Thanks Maria!!
I would love to join! And I’m available all day, 11am works too if we keep that
I’d also like to join!
Hey guys,
Great to see so much enthusiasm! I’m taking the liberty to add some points so as to make the best out of everybody’s time.
The fiche to be filled in
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It seems like some information from the original (in French) is missing in Maria Claudia’s template. It’s the “quelques conseils des architectes” part at the bottom.
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Reef-specific information that is missing:
- We are looking for a site of 1500 m² minimum, of which 600 m² would be for the building and 900 m² for the garden.
- The Blueprint 1.0 mentions that a significant part of the garden should get sunlight in the afternoon, so it’s probably a good idea to include something about that in the fiche too.
Things we would like to learn during the pilot
- How many streets can be covered in e.g. one hour?
- How can one estimate / measure the size of a site?
- Difficulties and how to overcome them?
- How can we keep track of which streets have been scouted?
What would be great to have by the plenary of 17/04
- A fiche that has all the info and questions we need
- A map that we can cut into pieces and divide among us
- A plan of when we would like to finish which parts (think max 2 months to finish the entire west of Brussels)
- A methodology to keep track of progress (colour-coding on a paper map or a digital tool plus a manual for dummies)
Working together
I’d like to interfere as little as possible, because it doesn’t feel good and it’s probably also counterproductive. Nevertheless I figure it may be helpful to bring in a couple of pointers:
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@Dave_behave will be taking the lead for the organisation of the pilot. He will contact people on Signal and communicate the time that works best.
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Would somebody be willing to volunteer to complete the fiche with the missing information from the architects etc? (see above)
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Once the fiche is finished, would somebody be willing to copy a stack, and bring them on Sunday?
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When you do the debriefing on Sunday, can you please agree on who will be taking the next steps, and who will be presenting at the plenary meeting of 17/04, and can you please post this information on here?
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Hello everyone,
I am printing all fiches to have a clearer idea of what we have to do for Sunday.
But I’d like to quickly react to two things:
@Lee @Dave_behave I thought of creating a Signal Group “Scouting Anderlecht” to bring together participants. Dave, since you take the lead in the organisation, I’ll leave this in your hands, hope it is ok? (I can also do it, it is only 2 min 
)
I can volunteer to complete de fiche with the missing info from the architects.
I will bring paper copies of the fiches with me on Sunday.
I cannot commit to the last point about taking next steps as I don’t think I can attend the plenary on 17/04 (I have an exam two days after).
For all participants: for personal reasons, I would like to keep the initial proposal for 11.00 because I have a tight schedule for the weekend (I need to organise my studying time). But I suggest that we do two groups: early birds at 11.00 and another group later? Could this work? In any case, we can be informed on Signal to avoid duplication and scout the same places.
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this is for team_members who have high level view of the whole scouting project
i also dont want to interfere too much because i have not been in the discussions. so apologies if what i bring here is not good.
but i think that we need more than just a fiche. we need a clear set of instructions that we can give to any scouter, so they can read instructions and do the job 
walk and upload the data somewhere in a way that is coherent with what The reef wants
Hi @manuelpueyo,
Thanks a lot for your input. I understand the need for clear instructions, and I think that it is part of the objective of the pilot to bring these together, based on this first experience.
I also worry that we tend to over-complicate the scouting exercise more than necessary. What we aim to do is to have a look at each and every building or plot of land in the streets that we are scouting. When somebody spots something that could potentially be interesting, they fill in the fiche and give it to Team Building. Team Building will then have a look at it from a more expert point of view, and if they think the site has potential, they will send the fiche to the architects. The architects will then have another look at it, and if they also see some potential, they will let us know that they could do a feasibility study.
What is defined as potential should be in the fiche: 600 m² building area (assumption: 4 floors) + 900 m² garden (with sun in the afternoon).
Does that clarify things?
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Scouting: Meet tomorrow at 1100 at Cafe La Belle Vue just next to Bizet Metro.
We can have a coffee in this bar (it gets terrible reviews) and strategize.
Any issues you can message me on Signal directly.
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Dear all,
I have completed the fiche for Team Anderlecht 1 (Maria, Claudia, Dave). May I ask Team Anderlecht 2 (@ChrisM @Sarah @Sophie_Beese) to complete the other part?
Here is the fiche and here video/photos of site Deleers (the one that it’s for rent and we all liked)
With Van Damme site (I love the name), please be aware that I made a mistake in the measurement. It is not 400 sqm2, it is actually 9 400 sqm2, according to google earth (I was looking at the wrong values the first time).
If people are missing information in the fiche, please let us know. Tagging participants, team Building and reeflings interested in this exercise: @alberto @Dave_behave @ClaudiaPr @manuelpueyo @ugne @Lee @RichardB @MariaClaudia @JolanWuyts @reef-building
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Great work. Maria! It was super exciting to make a small start… thanks for all the organisation 
Thanks! Looks even better like this!
Is this for both the big plots of land? Just a bit confused and wondering why you didn’t include the second plot of land on the picture? It could also be an option no? I think there was even a third plot that could be used…
Regarding other ways of scouting as explained by the notary, I have some news re the contacting communes: the echevinne of Renovation urbaine and Contrats de quartier durables of Anderlecht came ringing at our door a while back and I ended up with her carte de visite 
So if you want I could contact her.
As team building is a bit stretched thin ATM, I could help with that side of things and look for other numbers for each commune…
Just ideas, happy to step back if not needed and just send you the contact details… Let me know!
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Thanks for the offer @sarah!
Could you please make a little note somewhere that we need to contact the guy that is quoted in this article (Wonen in voormalige kantoorgebouwen is nieuwe trend in Brussel: Nathan en Astrid tonen hun appartementen | VRT NWS: nieuws)?
It speaks about the fact that there is currently 21 million m² of empty offices in Brussels, and that they are actively trying to convert them to urban housing. It’s in Dutch sadly, but maybe a right-click in Google Chrome can auto-translate it?
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I could also loop in Charles Spapens in Forest. We went to talk to him about the old Reef. Maybe we should just plan this kind of visits too. And on that: @Sarah did Julien in Tivoli finally send you the contact of the Citydev person in charge of cohousing?
i sent an informal email to someone who works for the brussels bowmeister : kristian borret
They were going on holliday the following day for 10 days or so… I was waiting a bit to send the follow up, but will do soon .
Hi Sarah, I have read this message and will upddate the fiche with 1) the map of team 2 and 2) the maps of the other two land spaces in Van Damme street. I will do it as of 19 April (when I have my exam).
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Hello @reef-building,
Alberto and I went scouting this weekend, and - as was also mentioned at the plenary - we found that it would be great if we could have a half-page manual, so that we don’t waste time on things that aren’t worth it.
As part of this, I found that part of the instructions from the architects (see this file) have not been converted correctly for The Reef. So where for Brutopia they were looking for a site of 1000 m², for The Reef it’s 1500 m². This 1500 is 900 for the garden and 600 for the building. The latter is counting on 4 floors (so 2400 m² built area), so if it’s possible to do more floors, the site can be smaller.
Would it please be possible to include this information somewhere?
I post it here because the “Wiki” of the scouting exercice isn’t intended for this.
Is it needed that the site we are looking for is looking abandonned? I’m personnally thinking that a lot of industry are willing or being ready to leave Brussels and that a lot of places are only partially used deu to difficulties for industry in Belgium.
I’ve this site as example : https://goo.gl/maps/DkeNr2CJZekPiJe16?coh=178572&entry=tt
I never see there any truck or other and the site is so huge. I guess they don’t think about selling and moving away but maybe if we come with a offer … ?
I’d also like to share following online tool of the “Cadastre” : CadGIS (fgov.be)
I used it to look for big buildings before scouting with Manuel and it did help us. It is a little more easy to use to find big open spaces but it is possible too.
Further I have contacted Sven Gatz and he gave me the contact of an “echevin” of Jette for empty and abondonded places. I took the initiative to contact her and she already came back to me for making an apointment. More info on the Building Team Meeting of thursday.
I also had the contact of someone of CityDev but I did not contact him for the moment, I wanted to discus this first in the meeting
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Hi everyone,
I have been “elected” as scouting coordinator, with which I am happy.
I will in the next weeks work on scouting fiche’s, I would like them to evaluate alle the criteria of the blueprint and having some notes about them.
A follow-up file to know which neighborhoods have been scouted will also be done.
I will also make a how-to for explaining how to scout, what to look for, information to gather, …
But first, I would like to have contact with the Architects to better understand what we are looking for, what information we must gather, … (Contacts will be taken by @Sophie_Beese next week, she is enjoying some holidays)
After that I will think about which information to gather by who (the scouter, myself, architects, … ???)
And finally, I will be able to finish the scouting fiche and the How-To.
I will also make one Excel-file gathering all the info of the fiches so we can more easily evaluate the buildings between them, even scoring them.
This will take 2 weeks I guess but that has not to stop you scouting.
Cordially
Julien
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