Staircases are not the real reason why North American apartments are different. Minimum parking requirements are the real reason.
this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
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Not Just Bikes
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That makes more sense. My condo building in the US is a hundred years old and looks similar to the "rest of the world" buildings. It has 8 units, 4 floors, and 2 staircases. It's not a difficult design to fit an extra staircase into a walkup.
I used to live on the upper floor of a two-story "garden apartment" (which is a uniquely North American style of building that was popular around the '50s-'70s, as far as I can tell) that was designed basically like groups of adjacent quad-plexes. I had a front door from my living room to an interior staircase that opened out onto the complex's courtyard, as well as a back door from my kitchen to an exterior metal staircases that went directly to the parking lot. There were no common hallways and each unit had windows on two sides (the front and back).
In terms of the staircases, at least, the design was very efficient.
The only limiting factor stopping them from building more stories on top with the same design (other than that tenants would start wanting an elevator) is the fact that the site basically maxed out the area available for a surface parking lot. Building more stories would've required also building a parking deck in order to meet zoning requirements, even though the parking it already had was never more than half-full.
UK here: we have some council flats like this and a lot of more traditional houses have been converted to a very similar set up with an upstairs and a downstairs flat, the only difference being that the staircase is inside.
Agreed, this theory is way off the mark. Buildings in the U.S. require parking lots, except in highly dense areas served by mass transit. Strange that this video would ignore the most infamous problem the U.S. faces.
Buildings here in Germany also require parking lots. Usually the cities or municipalities have their own regulations, the rate can vary quite a bit between cities. No idea how many compared to the US.
I don't want to watch a video. Is there a written version?
No idea, but the rule is a 2 staircase requirement. All building 2 floors and higher in most of Canada and US must require 2 staircases which means that they take up more room in a building and limit the possible room configurations in the building as well. The reason for 2 staircases is because of the increased fire hazards US and Canadian homes faced due to using wood for home construction unlike in Europe where extremely fire resistant materials are used. The host indicates that fire deaths have dropped significantly because of fire retardant technology throughout US and Canadian homes that makes the 2 story rule pointless for home less than 6 stories tall.
Ah yes, fire removedant, thanks lemmy.ml!
Fuck.click.bait
is this clickbait
Three instructions.
So others can see: The rule is a 2 staircase requirement. All building 2 floors and higher in most of Canada and US must require 2 staircases which means that they take up more room in a building and limit the possible room configurations in the building as well. The reason for 2 staircases is because of the increased fire hazards US and Canadian homes faced due to using wood for home construction unlike in Europe where extremely fire resistant materials are used. The host indicates that fire deaths have dropped significantly because of fire retardant technology throughout US and Canadian homes that makes the 2 story rule pointless for home less than 6 stories tall.
In America, apartments aren't built to house people, they are built to make money like everything else.
I would invite you to come to Germany. Go to any city, Cologne for example and look at any apartment built in the last 60 years.
. . . and what would they find? C'mon, make your comment say something.
Oh sorry, that's implied. Row after row, whole neighborhoods of ugly apartment buildings. Many of which are worse than North American apartments, others simular in many ways. You can cherry pick examples on both sides to make an article like this on both sides. I could take you to many tourist areas where you find historical buildings like shown in this article, but it's not the majority of where people actually live in Europe. The problem that is highlighted is why we don't make buildings like we used to, which in itself, is flawed.
I dropped four random pins on streets in Köln or surrounding areas. In the fourth I landed on a street with separate houses, so I moved one street over to the apartments there.
Looks alright. Walkable, bike parking is good. Buildings look okay, not fancy, but pleasant enough. I don't love that cars are allowed to park on the sidewalks, though, that's foolish.
More separated, basically sets of row houses.
Nice enough. The trash bins should be in the street and not on the sidewalk, but this is okay.
Obviously still pretty car-focused, but a pleasant enough street with the tree canopy. The apartments are not flashy or new, but seem to be solid.
Again, not a flashy set of buildings, but the materials seem solid, the courtyards in between the neighboring buildings are nice. The patios on the top floor are nice features.
In general, these units appear better than the thrown-together rental units they spew out in my city to be flipped and sold in 2-3 years before the worst of the leaks or deferred maintenance are revealed.
Hey, thanks for the pictures! Cologne is certainly a more bike and walking friendly city than America. Although nearly everywhere is better than America (as a whole) for that. This issue is still there though. It's a classic "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence" problem. That and using absolutes (and only a sith deals in absolutes). For example go to the load screen of the video. The picture on the left (America) - this apartment complex is what is shown in the majority of your photos in cologne. Boring building, economically built. The picture on the right "the rest of the world" is beautiful historical buildings and not representing "the rest of the world" but simply an older style of building.
It's clickbait comenting just like that title
Nonsense. The reason (at least in Austria) why we have these cute tiny budings is due to how taxes worked 100s of years ago, where the larger the side facing the street was, the more you had to pay.
These days the vast majority of new buildings are the usual lifeless big apartment buildings, just like in NA.
I see arguments like this a lot, but nobody to my knowledge has done a proper study of fire resistent materials. We have statistics showing newer buildings are safer with two stairways. I won't put my loved ones life onethe line because youtube says so.
In my experience apartments here are MUCH nicer.