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Why North America Can't Build Nice Apartments (because of one rule)

About Here · 2.2M views · 2023-12-11 · 12:10

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Overview

About Here explains how North American building codes requiring two staircases make small multi-story apartment buildings hard to build, and contrasts this with places that allow single-stair designs.

On Hacker News

HN commenters share it in housing and single-stair egress threads as an enjoyable, accessible explainer of the two-stair rule.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2023–2025

Topics

Transit, cities & urban planningCivil engineering & construction
Search by tags
building codessingle-stairhousingfire egressurbanism

What people said

languagehacker · 2024-05 · Recommendation

I caught a YouTube about this recently that I really enjoyed. "Why North America Can't Build Nice Apartments (Because of One Rule)" [VIDEO]

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aeturnum · 2024-05 · Recommendation

I liked this youtube video that covers the same topic[1]. The US focusing entirely on this strategy to increase fire safety seems obviously stupid to me. As people say in other comments here - Europe and other countries require better fire suppression measures and materials instead of particular egress options. An obvious improvement would be to allow builders to use any combination of these approaches to achieve a minimal level of safety. [1] [VIDEO]

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lokar · 2023-12 · Recommendation

A video I found interesting related to this: [VIDEO] Outdated building codes require 2 stairs, making smaller multi-story housing infeasible. So only larger (whole block) projects pencil out, but people don’t like them because they don’t fit in well. I wonder if smaller (the size of 1-2 normal lots) 4-6 floor buildings spread out more would face less resistance.

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Sources

Video by About Here, played through YouTube.

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