Former Spacing Radio producer Megan Hall was in New York City during the days leading up to Hurricane Irene. Here is her report on how NYC dealt with the mass evacuation. NEW YORK — New York City was not the best place to live in last week. On Tuesday we experienced an earthquake and a day later, news of a giant impending hurricane. It is a fascinating experience to see a city such as New York mobilized to protect itself against an unpredictable natural force. I found out on Thursday morning that my apartment on East 10th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues, was just a half block away from the Zone C evacuation area, and while chances of mandatory evacuation in Zone C were rare, the fact remained that they were announced, and there was a plan in case they had to be used. On Thursday afternoon my neighbor knocked on my door, telling me he was going door-to-door to find out who was going to be home over the weekend, because odds were that we were all going to be together without power, possibly for several days. We might need to ban together. Friday morning, I went to the Kmart (the only big housewares store in lower Manhattan) to stock up on flashlights, batteries, and duct tape for my windows but I was already too late. Kmart was sold out, and I soon found out that Best Buy, Radio Shack, Staples, Dwayne Reade, Walgreens and others were all out of stock as well. The city was panicking.

Teams of Toronto university students joined professional architecture, engineering, and design firms on Tuesday night at the annual event CANstruction to work towards a common goal: ending the need for food banks within the Greater Toronto Area. Firms across the GTA were allowed only the use of cans (and puns) as design materials to construct what resemble giant pictures from a children's storybook. All canned goods will be donated to the Daily Bread Food Bank. Toronto's KPMB in partnership with Halsall Associates Ltd., took the prize for juror's choice with their creation of YES BEE CAN, a natural setting involving, what else, a bee and creatively designed flowers using rice paper. U of T's ArtSci OT9 left with the prize for best student team for their creation, LEGO Man, whom they artistically cut in half due to height restrictions. Other prize categories ranged from Best Use of Labels (Diamond and Schmitt Architects Inc. won for their design Rub-a-Dub-Dub) to Best Meal (won by Stantec for CANmunity Garden). Kendra Schank Smith, Chair of Architecture at Ryerson University, and Robert Ouellette of the National Post, among others, were at hand to present the awards to the winners. Now in its 10th year, CanStruction is helping to feed the 80,000 people who use the Daily Bread Food Bank every month, and the competition continues to grow. This year, the event attracted 24 teams from across the city. Check out the CanSculptures for yourself in the lobby of one of the TD Centre towers. See more photos after the jump.

Thanks to a City of Toronto project to reduce pole pollution, Dundas Street West is looking a little less cluttered these days. As part of the redesign of the Art Gallery of Ontario, TTC streetcar poles have been removed; supporting crosswires now run directly into eyelets all along the front of the new building. However, when the wires were first installed two weeks ago, the glass cracked under the tension of the wires (photo above and below). You can see photos of the replacement on Torontoist. City staff indicated the geometry of the eyelet, ...

• Grey garbage bin system starts this week [Toronto Star] • Garbage myths we hold dear [Toronto Star] • Rejected green bin frustrates diligent recycler [Toronto Star] • Mayor stays mum on shakeup rumblings [Globe and Mail] • Homeowners raise stink over pay-as-you-throw garbage system [Globe and Mail] • Power to the pedal in city bike-lane showdown [Globe and Mail] • On St. Nicholas Street, 1870s versus 2008 [National Post] • City says no landlord licenses but it may charge fees [National Post] • TTC boss denies service cuts [Toronto Sun] • Council's road warriors [Toronto Sun] • ...

Green Party candidate Ellen Michelson has decided not to put up campaign signs in public spaces throughout her riding of Toronto Centre. “Public space is everyone's”, she says, and she feels uncomfortable altering that space without any kind of agreement process. Instead she thinks that campaign volunteers who go door-to-door get the Green message across, along with information that can be found on the Internet. Rami Tabello of illegalsigns.ca (who was profiled in the Summer/Fall issue of Spacing) disagrees completely with Michelson, however, calling her "completely misguided." Tabello says the system for placing signs on ...

On a walk through Queen's Park yesterday afternoon, I spotted a huge bird in one of the trees. I started walking towards it only to realize it was, to my surprise, a red-tailed hawk. Many people approached when they saw me snapping pictures -- parents pointing it out to their kids, OPS employees on their lunch breaks, picnickers. It was nice to see everyone out appreciating the little bit of wildlife that we get to see from time to time in the city. The bird turned around nicely a few times so that ...

Spacing correspondent Megan Hall has just returned from Beijing. Over the next few weeks, she will continue to share her observations of China's capital in the aftermath of the 2008 Olympics. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Returning to Toronto has made me appreciate this city more than ever -- the clean air and small city blocks as well as the diverse neighbourhoods with so many types of food available on every street. There is one ...

Spacing correspondent Megan Hall is in Beijing this summer. Over the next few weeks, she will be sharing her observations of China's capital as it prepares to welcome the world to the 2008 Olympics. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BEIJING -- Just a few weeks ago, I was biking down one of Beijing's main arteries in the middle of the day, when I saw a house that looked oddly out of place on the well-groomed throughway. What drew my attention were the posters of prominent Chinese Communist party officials throughout the years- Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Wen Jiabao, Hu Jintao. Three flags flew from the roofs of the shack -- a People's Republic of China flag, a Soviet Union flag, and an Olympic flag. Whoever put this together, was clearly trying to make a statement. There was a small crowd gathered out front, reading photocopies of officials documents glued to the building. Thanks to most of the reading I've been doing throughout my visit here, I was able to peg it as what the Chinese call a Nail House -- a house that refuses to make way for new development and is therefore hard to hammer down. I had read a lot about these houses, but I had never seen one in person, and here one was, just minutes away from the Forbidden City and on a route that leads tourists directly up the Central Axis. I had previously seen pictures of the famous Nail House in Chongqing, but what made this particular Nail House different was that the first stage of development had already taken place. Surrounding this house was a perfectly manicured park and a large red wall built on either side. Clearly, several houses had been torn down in order to make room for this development, and seeing as the space that the Nail House occupied was the only part of the wall not completed, this was clearly the issue that had led to the protest I was now witnessing. These tall red walls are visible everywhere in Beijing and their main purpose appears to be to hide the old city. In every one of these walls there is an entrance to the old hutongs that, on most occasions, still lies within. What one finds upon entering is an entirely different world than the well-manicured and pristine streets that have been propped up for tourism's sake. Half-destroyed houses and huge piles of rubble are scattered throughout these neighbourhoods and lay right next to occupied houses. On many occasions, people still live in buildings that are missing walls and ceilings. The defining feature of each of these half-demolished neighbourhoods is the character “chai”, meaning "to tear down." These symbols are painted on in white paint, which shows up perfectly against the ubiquitous grayish-blue of the hutongs. Sometimes entire neighbourhoods will bear the character, a haunting symbol of the destruction that is soon to come. These neighbourhoods are not few and far between, either. I've biked through neighbourhoods that lay just on the other side of the street from Tiananmen Square (hidden behind a wall, of course), to hutongs like the one just off the Dragon Vein.

Spacing correspondent Megan Hall is in Beijing this summer. Over the next few weeks, she will be sharing her observations of China's capital as it prepares to welcome the world to the 2008 Olympics. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BEIJING, CHINA -- A central north-south axis runs directly through the heart of Beijing. Beginning at Qianmen gate, the ‘Dragon Vein', as it is sometimes called, runs directly through Mao's mausoleum, straight through Tiananmen Square, and cuts the Forbidden City in half. It then continues overtop of Jingshan, a hill artificially constructed during the Ming dynasty, runs up through the Drum Tower and ends at the Bell Tower, both of which were used to summon the Imperial Court to the Forbidden City during dynastic rule. In recent years, however, an extension has been made to this perfect meridian. Just 10 kilometres north of the Forbidden City, on either side of the same north-south axis, stands the Bird's Nest (formally known as the National Stadium), and the Water Cube (the National Aquatic Centre), both built specifically for China's shining moment that arrives in the coming weeks. This single line defines the new Olympic Green and permits the powerful symmetry to continue straight through north Beijing.

Spacing correspondent Megan Hall is in Beijing this summer. Over the next few weeks, she will be sharing her observations of China's capital as it prepares to welcome the world to the 2008 Olympic games in August. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BEIJING -- Beijing's parks must be some of the busiest in the world. They range in size from small corners of housing complexes to large, immaculately landscaped gardens. At any hour of ...