> …and they're about to ban windowless bedrooms which will make office-to-housing conversions impossible.
Where is this not banned?
And it’s not like offices don’t have windows or you can’t cut them. The ban on windowless bedrooms is supposed to prevent renting out a utility closet as a “rustic studio”.
No, the ban is because an architect thinks they're icky, sent in a request to ban it, and the building code people take any suggestion to ban anything that anyone sends them. Safety regulations are written in blood, you know!
The ban on windowless bedroom is at least partly about fire safety. A window provides an escape route for low floors, or a means for firefighters to rescue the occupants.
> Among other things, elevators are much stricter and so less frequent than any other country
Speaking from experience with elevators in various countries: Let's keep the part where, for instance, elevators need a door. (And I'm sure I haven't experienced anywhere close to the long tail of bad elevators.) Some regulations make sense.
But if there are ways to make elevators substantially faster without being unsafe, that'd be lovely. What do US elevators fail to do that they could be doing?
And in the US, nobody in the relevant unions or regulators cares about cities - elevator workers and firefighters are all suburbanite pickup-truck-Americans. So they're rarely personally interested in anything that isn't about driving a big car around really fast. This has a big impact on road layouts and the outside of buildings, because of course everyone listens to firefighters, but all they want to do is drive a big red truck everywhere with nothing stopping them.
(Which sometimes leads to them eg shutting down pedestrian safety improvements, and always leads to big wide access roads.)
I mean the US has a long history of killing people due to bad designs and cut corners. Everyone says cut safety for cost until 50 people die in a death trap.
> …and they're about to ban windowless bedrooms which will make office-to-housing conversions impossible.
Where is this not banned?
And it’s not like offices don’t have windows or you can’t cut them. The ban on windowless bedrooms is supposed to prevent renting out a utility closet as a “rustic studio”.
No, the ban is because an architect thinks they're icky, sent in a request to ban it, and the building code people take any suggestion to ban anything that anyone sends them. Safety regulations are written in blood, you know!
https://bsky.app/profile/stephenjacobsmith.com/post/3m3xpe3n...
The ban on windowless bedroom is at least partly about fire safety. A window provides an escape route for low floors, or a means for firefighters to rescue the occupants.
12 replies →
> Among other things, elevators are much stricter and so less frequent than any other country
Speaking from experience with elevators in various countries: Let's keep the part where, for instance, elevators need a door. (And I'm sure I haven't experienced anywhere close to the long tail of bad elevators.) Some regulations make sense.
But if there are ways to make elevators substantially faster without being unsafe, that'd be lovely. What do US elevators fail to do that they could be doing?
Mainly the minimum size requirements are much larger (requirements related to stretchers).
Also, in some/all places the elevator union got basically all manufacturing processes banned so they have to be assembled on site by union workers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/opinion/elevator-construc...
And in the US, nobody in the relevant unions or regulators cares about cities - elevator workers and firefighters are all suburbanite pickup-truck-Americans. So they're rarely personally interested in anything that isn't about driving a big car around really fast. This has a big impact on road layouts and the outside of buildings, because of course everyone listens to firefighters, but all they want to do is drive a big red truck everywhere with nothing stopping them.
(Which sometimes leads to them eg shutting down pedestrian safety improvements, and always leads to big wide access roads.)
I mean the US has a long history of killing people due to bad designs and cut corners. Everyone says cut safety for cost until 50 people die in a death trap.