The Single-Staircase Radicals Have a Good Point, Slate, Henry Grabar, December 23, 2021

Most American apartment buildings over four stories are required to include two means of egress from every apartment. In Canada, the height limit of a single-stair building is just two stories. The purported reason for such rules is fire safety, though there’s no evidence that Americans and Canadians are any safer from structure fires than our neighbors around the world, where one-staircase construction is permitted even in buildings eight, 10, or 20 stories high.

This is similar to the phenomenon of extremely wide residential streets in the United States, which are often defended as necessary to bring in fire engines. However, in many other countries, the fire engines themselves are smaller, designed to fit a normal street. And yes, they work.

There’s an issue of these two-staircase codes tilting the playing field towards larger developers and larger projects:

[W]hen you require every apartment to connect to two staircases, you all but ensure those units are built around one long double-loaded corridor, to give all residents access to both stairways. You tilt the scales in favor of larger floor plates in bigger buildings, because developers need to find room for two stairways, and connect them—and then compensate for the unsellable interior space consumed by the corridor.

Grabar is writing here about a wonky building-code issue, but it also speaks to something much broader and more conceptual: an American tendency to seek lots of excess capacity. Five- or eight-seat cars that usually have one occupant, wide roads, huge parking lots, etc. We find comfort and convenience in this redundancy. But we’re also giving up a lot of possibilities that we often don’t think about.

Read the whole thing.

New archdiocesan senior residence ‘a beacon’ on Broad Street, Catholic Philly, Gina Christian, November 11, 2021

Sitting on a former parking lot bordering a subway station, this new apartment complex built through the efforts of the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia is an example of a growing trend. Some have dubbed it “YIGBY” for “Yes in God’s Back Yard,” as urban churches in recent years have begun to use parking lots or underutilized land for new housing.

The article points out that the lack of senior-friendly housing often forces seniors to leave neighborhoods they have lived in for many years. These units make it easier for them to “age in place,” as the term goes.

Big Cars Are Killing Americans, The Atlantic, Angie Schmitt, December 29, 2021

European and Japanese regulators have for many years imposed pedestrian-safety standards on automakers, leading to innovations like the active hood (a little airbag-type of cushioning for a car’s hood). American regulators, however, have been slow to think beyond the driver’s seat.

I suspect there are some people who would read this and conclude, “So she wants me to die instead!” But that reaction assumes that safety is zero-sum. Yes, some number of auto-related fatalities are probably inevitable, given the inherent danger in driving and the ever-present possibility of human error or, occasionally, mechanical failure or malfunction.

But the irony is that big cars are only safer because they marginally protect against other big cars. I wrote a little bit about this here, where I argued that the station wagon should replace the SUV as the typical family car. Making cars safer for pedestrians does not make them less safe for occupants.

The fourth entry today is not an article but a fascinating Twitter thread from Alex Aslup, documenting the unlikely, recent revitalization of vacant, dilapidated homes all over Detroit. Probably having something to do with the pandemic, moving patterns, and housing prices, this is one of the most interesting things I’ve seen in a long time. Check it out and give him a follow.

Alex Alsup @ZugIslander

I mentioned recently that I’ve seen a lot of Detroit homes that were vacant and often in dire condition prior to the pandemic, that are now occupied and, many, rehabbed. I haven't seen anything like it at this scale in 10 years studying Detroit housing.

December 17th 2021

66 Retweets360 Likes

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