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No. It’s not only fire that’s a hazard, but a personal safety thing. Most men here probably never experienced being stalked, or having to turn around when your
by exabrial 3y ago
No.
It’s not only fire that’s a hazard, but a personal safety thing. Most men here probably never experienced being stalked, or having to turn around when your path is through a group of shady characters.
In the Midwest, brick/concrete fire stairwells have another benefit: tornado shelters. While a sufficient tornado would decimate any wooden structure, these stairwells provide essential protection from the main hazard in a tornado: flying debris.
Offhand I can think of a dozen more reasons. Lets not reverse sensible progress in the name of profits and tax revenue.
- piombisallow 3y agoSafetyism will be the death of civilization.
- lanewinfield 3y agoprofits and tax revenue? how about more housing for those who need it? or should we prevent housing for the 500,000 americans who don't have it because of tornadoes?
- Spivak 3y agoThis is what's called a false dilemma, pitting two non-mutually exclusive options as an either or situation when they're actually not opposed to one another. We should get to reap the benefits of improved fire and personal safety and build more housing.
- bluGill 3y agoYou would scream if those homeless died in a fire or tornado because the building lacked protection. The two staircase rule increases costs, but not by that much - any place that allows building housing doens't have a homeless problem. That isn't to say there are no homeless people - there are many - but they are homeless because of other issues (mental). In California the homeless often are otherwise normal people who cannot afford a place to live despite the ability to work a job. Where I live you can rent a new two bedroom apartment in walking distance of Burger King that pays enough to afford that apartment and leave enough leftover for food - it won't be a great life, but you can live on one income (and since most people live as a couple that second income can buy some nice things)
- cjwilliams 3y agoI wonder if building second stairwells in multifamily buildings is really a cost effective way of mitigating stalking.
- phatskat 3y agoMitigation isn’t the end result - the OP (as I read it) is saying that two exits provides for not being trapped by a stalker. You may still be stalked or approached by a malicious group of actors, but a second exit makes it much more difficult to be cornered.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ajuc 3y agoIt's fucked up that you have problem with society and you think the way to solve it is building code.
- pjmorris 3y agoMaybe, but there's a long tradition that suggests maybe it's necessary... "229 If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death." - Hammurabi's Code, ~1750 BC
- oblio 3y agoIt's one thing to ensure the builder doesn't skimp on mortar and an entirely different thing to try to mitigate stalking with 2 stairwells...
- quickthrowman 3y agoThis is why an architect and/or engineer(s) supervise a general contractor. A few things have changed in the construction industry over the last 3800 years. I’m not sure why I even bother reading HN threads about construction.
- Dylan16807 3y agoAnd if you don't supervise well enough, should it be legally fine to give you a defective house? If yes, that's a horrible idea. If no, then I don't see how "things have changed" in a way that's relevant to the comment you replied to.
- quickthrowman 3y agoPlease respond in good faith instead of trying to ‘gotcha’ me. There are building inspections periodically during construction by the authority having jurisdiction, with the important trades (MEP, civil, structural) having their own specialized inspections. When you buy a new house (or a new building), you will receive a warranty for workmanship from the builder who should have corresponding workmanship warranties for all their subcontractors, and the materials will also have warranties from the manufacturer. Lastly, you can sue the builder if all other options are exhausted.
- carabiner 3y ago"Think of the children" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children) has morphed into "think of the helpless women." Tell me, in places that do not have this building regulation, is stalking an epidemic at apartment buildings? In what other ways are they suffering? Would you support adding a two-stair requirement in those locales?
- standardUser 3y agoYeah, that'll happen when no one thinks about women for a few hundred years. What year did your state make it illegal for a man to hit his wife?
- oblio 3y ago> In what other ways are they suffering? In Europe they are also suffering from too long toilet stalls and as a result there are mass drug use problems as well as all sorts of unsavory characters having sex in there.
- adameasterling 3y agoYou are free to choose buildings with multiple stairways if that's a requirement for you! We're talking about easing mandatory regulations, allowing builders to meet demand. We're not saying that all buildings must only have one stairway.
- prpl 3y agoyou might want to entertain the possibility that, due to these limitations, there’s much less families in the city, as a 3BR apartment is rare and a 4 BR apartment unheard of. In Europe and even south America, that’s not typically the case. Having lived in both Santiago, Chile and San Francisco with a family, I’d say generally the quality of life is higher (schools, restaurants, opportunities) in major cities in the US, but it’s easier live as family (without a car) in Santiago. Having relatives in Europe I think this is also true. I’m not sure if removing this limitation fixes that, but without high density 3+ bedroom housing you don’t get families (especially middle class families)
- ksenzee 3y agoThe two-staircase requirement leads directly to apartment buildings being big, with long corridors. Given my choice of living in a small building with a few families, with one staircase, where people know each other (the one-stair architecture does in fact lend itself to residents knowing each other) or living in a big building, with long corridors, where people don’t get to know each other, I’d feel a lot safer as a woman living in the smaller building.
- Retric 3y agoA 2nd set of stairs split across multiple units is a trivial matter from a cost perspective. Height restrictions, adding more office space than housing, mandatory parking etc are the real issues. Tiny increases in construction costs get wiped out when there’s insufficient housing stock.
- r00fus 3y agoThere is a strong correlation between construction costs and housing stock.
- Retric 3y agoNot in locations where there’s a housing shortage. Outside of skyscrapers building housing is cheap, it’s land and permission that’s the issue.
- mjmahone17 3y agoDouble loaded corridors fundamentally change the composition of buildings. If you look at example floorplans, single staircase buildings typically feature 2-3 bedroom apartments, because giving every bedroom a window is easier, while double loaded corridors end up mostly with deep studios and 1-beds. Building new housing in the US is not cheap, and reducing the leasable or buyable square footage by 10% can move projects from being profitable to build to not. Especially when the quality of the remaining square footage goes down (as it does when you have 30’ deep units with only one wall with windows).
- r00fus 3y agoAren't there other ways to address these safety issues without ballooning the cost of the building? When safety regulations come with minimal extra cost/efficiency (think: ABS or seatbelts in cars) then it's a great idea. When it mandates massive inefficiencies, it must be questioned.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> not only fire that’s a hazard, but a personal safety thing Affordable housing. Every edge case preference accommodated. Pick one.