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The 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 fam

The 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 ago
A 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 ago
  There is a strong correlation between construction costs and housing stock.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Not 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 ago
      Double 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).
      - Retric 3y ago
        There’s a multitude of options here for various floor plans. One of the classic solutions is an external fire escape which is cheap per apartment and isn’t impacting floor space. People may dislike the aesthetics though. Construction costs scale to the market segment you’re targeting. It’s common to aim up market with new housing but the cost of marble isn’t the same as the cost of housing. So be careful you’re looking at the minimums not what it takes to attract high end buyers.
- closeparen 3y ago
  The staircase itself is not the issue, it's the double-loaded corridor (hotel style) layout that it forces on the entire building.
- ksenzee 3y ago
  I can’t tell whether you’re unfamiliar with the single- vs. double-staircase architectural arguments, or disagreeing with them: https://slate.com/business/2021/12/staircases-floor-plan-twitter-housing-apartments.html https://slate.com/business/2021/12/staircases-floor-plan-twi...
  - Retric 3y ago
    The floor plans being compared in that example are terrible. Nobody is going to give an interior hallway windows on both ends if they don’t need to. You also need to consider external fire escapes etc.

Retric 3y ago

A 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 ago
There is a strong correlation between construction costs and housing stock.
- Retric 3y ago
  Not 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 ago
    Double 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).
    - Retric 3y ago
      There’s a multitude of options here for various floor plans. One of the classic solutions is an external fire escape which is cheap per apartment and isn’t impacting floor space. People may dislike the aesthetics though. Construction costs scale to the market segment you’re targeting. It’s common to aim up market with new housing but the cost of marble isn’t the same as the cost of housing. So be careful you’re looking at the minimums not what it takes to attract high end buyers.
closeparen 3y ago
The staircase itself is not the issue, it's the double-loaded corridor (hotel style) layout that it forces on the entire building.
ksenzee 3y ago
I can’t tell whether you’re unfamiliar with the single- vs. double-staircase architectural arguments, or disagreeing with them: https://slate.com/business/2021/12/staircases-floor-plan-twitter-housing-apartments.html https://slate.com/business/2021/12/staircases-floor-plan-twi...
- Retric 3y ago
  The floor plans being compared in that example are terrible. Nobody is going to give an interior hallway windows on both ends if they don’t need to. You also need to consider external fire escapes etc.