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Europe is behind on a lot of safety infrastructure compared to the US. You frame it as obsession, but really it's just good policy. > which in turn causes the
by voz_ 4y ago
Europe is behind on a lot of safety infrastructure compared to the US. You frame it as obsession, but really it's just good policy.
> which in turn causes the weird housing distribution of North American cities.
This is a hilarious misunderstanding of the complex intersection of class divides, race divides, gerrymandering, history (white flight), nimbyism, and for-profit zoning that has led to the current lack of mid-rise affordable housing.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> it's just good policy Is there any empirical data on the safety benefits of a second stairwell?
- voz_ 4y agoIn the spirit of curiosity - how would you go about measuring that? A counterfactual is almost impossible. That being said - when in doubt, I favor more regulation for safety, not less.
- jeffbee 4y agoYou could measure it by people who perish in structure fires, a metric on which America is far behind Europe.
- rwmj 4y agoYou'd need to weigh that against the costs and lost opportunities. If no one can buy an affordable apartment and overengineering is part of the cause, or if many die because of a car-centric culture because you can't built densely enough, that can be a problem.
- frickinLasers 4y agoI'd wager most of the US deaths occur in single-family homes--in basements (illegally housed), or even while sleeping in rooms with plenty of opportunity for egress.
- harywilke 4y agoThis got me curious. Best i could find was the CTIF (The International Association of Fire and Rescue Services) [1] and their annual report [2]. Table 1.2 shows a breakdown of fire deaths per 100 fires. US 0.3 France, Germany 0.1 Greece, UK, Belgium 0.2 Poland, Denmark, Slovakia 0.4 So it's a bit of a mixed bag. The reported average was 0.5 (report didn't cover every country). Sadly Canada wasn't in the table. Japan at 3.8 was a bit of a surprise. 1. https://ctif.org/world-fire-statistics https://ctif.org/world-fire-statistics 2. https://ctif.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/CTIF_Report27_ESG_0.pdf https://ctif.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/CTIF_Report27_E...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> how would you go about measuring that? Death and injury frequencies. Anecdotes of preventable deaths, e.g. where one stairwell was not enough versus where a corridor separating two stairwells became, itself, an obstacle. Drill simulations. We should have have some basis for the rule. (If we don't, I'd support scrapping it.)
- jimbob45 4y agowhite flight, nimbyism Is it truly unreasonable to want to move away from places where crime is rising and cleanliness and living standards are falling? Isn't it a bit unfair to ascribe that desire to the level of whiteness of a person?
- whatshisface 4y agoIt's a historical fact that got named after its most obvious feature. They were white people.
- pessimizer 4y agoDon't get triggered. Nobody is talking about you or calling you a bad person.
- mc32 4y agoAgreed. If we went on calling bad things by the predominant population which engages in negative practices, most people would object.
- shanebellone 4y agoI struggle with this too, but I find your reduction of a complex topic extremely ignorant and borderline racist. Your phrasing plays into a classic far-right trope. I do believe there are city people and rural people. Each has a right to choose for themselves. Forcing unwanted change on either group is wrong. Towns and cities should chart their own courses.
- blahedo 4y agoWell, the Black folks weren't allowed to move to the white areas, regardless of class or income, so even if the story of "that desire" were purely as rosy as you paint it (spoiler: it wasn't), the resulting migration would still be accurately titled "white flight".
- thatfrenchguy 4y agoI mean, there's still more people who die in fires in the US than in the EU, thanks mostly thanks to space heaters on 120v/15A circuits and absolutely zero retrofit requirements on anything (what do you mean I can have K&T and a Federal Pacific Panel that does not trip on overcurrent in my house with no GFCI/AFCI protection but every single new circuit I add needs to have those?). The US/Canada have gone too far into "new housing stock needs to be perfect" and not enough into "existing housing stock needs to be retrofitted", because not pissing off landlords and boomer homeowners is a main policy goal.
- googlryas 4y agoA cursory search says 3k Americans die in house fires, and 5k Europeans die in house fires per year, so probably EU had more fire deaths per capita. But it's hard to tell because EU doesn't have a FEMA equivalent collecting data on residential fire deaths. https://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/residential-fires/ https://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/residential-fires/ https://www.europeanfiresafetyalliance.org/our-focus/statistics/ https://www.europeanfiresafetyalliance.org/our-focus/statist...
- henrikschroder 4y agoHang on, this article is explicitly about mid-rise buildings and the fire safety of one vs two stairwells in those, so you can't drag up statistics that show combined data for all housing types. I'm assuming a large chunk of those fire deaths are people dying because they accidentally burned down their single-family single-story building. That's completely irrelevant in this case so you have to separate that out.
- sokoloff 4y agoThis sub thread got into the angle of general forced retrofit of new code requirements, and claimed a general loss of life from fires being higher in the US making introduction of facts about fire deaths overall relevant IMO.
- happyopossum 4y ago
- henrikschroder 4y ago> Europe is behind on a lot of safety infrastructure compared to the US. That's a rather sweeping statement. > and for-profit zoning that has led to the current lack of mid-rise affordable housing. Yes, it's a complicated issue with tons of causes, but what this site is saying is that the requirement for a second stairwell skews the economy of building mid-rises so much that they become unfeasible for developers (In Ontario) even if all the other factors were to be fixed. And so you're stuck with either high-rises or single-story buildings.
- boredumb 4y agowhite flight is a pejorative, the correct term is reverse-gentrification
- astrange 4y agoThis appears to be a dumb joke but the opposite of gentrification is "disinvestment".
- michaelt 4y ago> You frame it as obsession, but really it's just good policy. Well, there are alternative ways to reduce the risks presented by a fire in the primary staircase trapping people inside. For example, good sprinkler coverage of the primary staircase, strict rules prohibiting storing anything flammable below the staircase or running electrical wiring there, compartmentation so there's time for the fire brigade to arrive before a fire can spread between homes, housing options for vulnerable citizens so only able-bodied people have to evacuate via the stairs, and so on. Of course, many American buildings are made of wood, so it's understandable why American fire codes look different to European ones - and if I had to be in a burning building but could choose the design, an American-style single storey suburban home where every room has a window you can climb out of at ground floor level is hard to beat!
- jlhawn 4y agoYep, $1 Million+ homes in the largest job markets in the U.S. are hard to beat!
- shanebellone 4y agoI think a $100k cabin also meets the specified criteria.