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There are reasons for zoning requirements that skylights don't solve, and they are largely around egress. Some mall layouts may be conducive enough to having co

There are reasons for zoning requirements that skylights don't solve, and they are largely around egress. Some mall layouts may be conducive enough to having condos put on the top level, or one could design a modern mall for that now (I've seen a few). However retrofitting onto many of the 80s-90s era malls with huge floorplans is unlikely to be economically feasible.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Can you explain how the egress problem is supposed to work? Suppose you have a giant square floor plan, and housing units like this: [01][02][03][04] [05][06][07][08] [09][10][11][12] [13][14][15][16] Then units 01-04 and 13-16 are on the exterior of the building, units 05-12 are on the interior with skylights, and there are hallways between them as shown. Where is the egress problem?
- steveBK123 6y ago
  Zoning generally requires egress be possible from every room which is a sleeping quarters (or living space like living room) via a window or door to the outside. I’m not sure that a door to a common hallway would be considered legal egress. Further, even if it was, this would require each sleeping quarters within your apartment to have an emergency exit door to the common hallway, in addition to the door within your apartment. This would be pretty loud and unattractive. Another zoning concern is that there is generally a rule like “every area of apartment must be within 30 feet of door/window to outside”. So if you create these deep cavernous apartments you won’t be able to meet this rule either. For example in NYC, every room needs two forms of egress. Bedrooms this is the windows + door back to rest of your apartment. Living areas this is windows + door out to common hallway. It is illegal to create a room that has only 1 exit/entrance. The concept here is that in the event of a fire if your 1 & only exit is blocked you are dead. Similar rules apply to why in most jurisdictions you cannot legally finish off your basement unless it has sufficient exits directly to outside / windows big enough for a firefighter in full gear to fit through. This limits many existing basements for conversion depending on their depth as its hard to retrofit these into existing foundations..

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

Can you explain how the egress problem is supposed to work? Suppose you have a giant square floor plan, and housing units like this: [01][02][03][04] [05][06][07][08] [09][10][11][12] [13][14][15][16] Then units 01-04 and 13-16 are on the exterior of the building, units 05-12 are on the interior with skylights, and there are hallways between them as shown. Where is the egress problem?

steveBK123 6y ago
Zoning generally requires egress be possible from every room which is a sleeping quarters (or living space like living room) via a window or door to the outside. I’m not sure that a door to a common hallway would be considered legal egress. Further, even if it was, this would require each sleeping quarters within your apartment to have an emergency exit door to the common hallway, in addition to the door within your apartment. This would be pretty loud and unattractive. Another zoning concern is that there is generally a rule like “every area of apartment must be within 30 feet of door/window to outside”. So if you create these deep cavernous apartments you won’t be able to meet this rule either. For example in NYC, every room needs two forms of egress. Bedrooms this is the windows + door back to rest of your apartment. Living areas this is windows + door out to common hallway. It is illegal to create a room that has only 1 exit/entrance. The concept here is that in the event of a fire if your 1 & only exit is blocked you are dead. Similar rules apply to why in most jurisdictions you cannot legally finish off your basement unless it has sufficient exits directly to outside / windows big enough for a firefighter in full gear to fit through. This limits many existing basements for conversion depending on their depth as its hard to retrofit these into existing foundations..