Why North America Can't Build Nice Apartments (because of one rule)

Quaint walk-up apartments like this one behind me are a beloved feature in cities around the world. They're inviting and full of character. But here in North America, they are not allowed to be built today. Instead, our apartments are big and imposing, often stretching across an entire block. And the reason why really comes down to one reason. Staircases. This type of apartment building is called the point-access block. Its defining feature is that all its units share one staircase and elevator to the ground floor, which allows for a smaller, skinnier apartment. And these buildings are a common element in some of the most desirable neighborhoods in the world. So why don't we build these apartments here in North America? Well, in Canada and the US, all apartments above two or three stories need to give their units access to two separate staircases. We're some of the only countries across the world that are this strict about this requirement. In most other places, it only kicks in after six or more stories. And this one rule has huge implications. Staircases take up a lot of space, and fitting two of them in a small building means that there's much less usable floor space on every floor. As a result, developers here construct much larger buildings so that the staircases and hallways take up a much smaller proportion of the overall building. It's why apartments in North America in general are much bigger and wider than their European counterparts. Now, I'm not here to fat shame our bulky North American apartments. No, the reason I care about this issue is because this requirement is causing some major problems. For starters, it's making it much more difficult to build more housing. Big buildings require big properties. And in many cases, finding a property large enough for a large apartment requires a land assembly. This is where you convince multiple landowners to sell their properties to you at the same time so that you can combine them into one big lot. As you can imagine, this is a risky process that requires negotiations, legal reviews, and a ton of money. Single staircase buildings, on the other hand, can be much smaller, which means you can often build them on just one property. I think that makes these buildings an important solution right now because cities today are increasingly looking to add more housing into their single-family neighborhoods. Properties in these areas are already small to begin with, and I think it'd be very difficult to add more housing at scale without single staircase buildings. But this requirement isn't just making it more difficult to build new housing, it's also limiting the kinds of housing we can build. The reason why comes down to the hallway connecting the two staircases. It cuts the building in two, which means most of the units on either side of it can really only fit one bedroom. Let me explain. So this hotel I'm staying at kind of gives you an idea of what that looks like on the ground. I've got access to a stair over there and a stair over there, but what that really means is that the rooms essentially can only have a window on one side of the wall because there's a unit over there, there's a unit over there, which is, you know, fine for a hotel room, but for an apartment, this layout can be really challenging to work with. All bedrooms are required by law to have a window, and when you only have windows on one side of your apartment, it's challenging to fit any more than one or maybe two bedrooms into this layout. To demonstrate, let's take a look at the floor plan of an apartment in Quebec City. Most of its units only have windows on one wall. In fact, this poor unit only has windows on one corner, and because of that, all these units pretty much have to be one-bedroom apartments. This is a problem because our cities are facing a major shortage of apartments with three or more bedrooms, the kinds of spaces that are better suited for families. In Metro Vancouver, three-bedroom apartments make up 2% of units in the region's rental market, while studios and one-bedroom apartments make up almost 75%. And this shortage of family-friendly apartments is where I really see the potential of point-access block buildings. When you have one staircase, you don't need a hallway, which means that units can wrap around the staircase in all sorts of different ways. That makes it easier to have more walls with windows, which allows for apartment layouts with more than one bedroom. Check out this apartment layout from France. You can see that the single staircase allows for a three-bedroom unit, two two-bedrooms, and two one-bedrooms. And you know what else that's good for? Smelly roommates. Having open windows on different sides of an apartment makes it easier for air to move through the unit, which provides natural cooling and ventilation, another upside of the point-access block. I'm gonna pause this video for a sec because I'm sure some people will point out that there's this thing called scissor stairs that kind of addresses this issue. This is when two stairs crisscross down one column together, effectively taking up less space than two separate staircases. I don't wanna digress too much, so I'm just gonna list a few reasons why, in my opinion, scissor stairs aren't a great replacement for single stairs, but feel free to debate me in the comments. So why do we have this rule? Why does every apartment require two staircases? Well, to understand why, we have to go back in history, back to when cities across North America were adopting the first building codes. Back in the day, one of the biggest threats to your life in the city was dying in a fire. That, and maybe contracting tuberculosis. In fact, every now and then, an entire city would go up in flames, like Toronto in 1849, Montreal in 1852, Quebec City in 1866, Vancouver in 1886, St. John's in 1892, Westminster in 1898, Ottawa in 1900, and Toronto again in 1904. That's why cities across North America began to create robust fire safety regulations like this double staircase rule that's still in effect today. The idea behind it was quite simple. If you're in a building that's on fire, you don't wanna be stuck with only one option to get out. What if the staircase is full of smoke, or blocked, or, you know, on fire? So this was a very understandable rule. It was about our safety. But you might be wondering, why is it then that this rule is so strict in just North America? Well, cities in Asia and Europe had already dealt with this issue centuries before, but their approach was to require buildings to be made of more fireproof materials, like brick and stone. North American cities, on the other hand, were growing quickly, and it was much quicker to build it out of wood than to painstakingly lay bricks and stones. Plus, wood was more readily available in North America, and with the invention of the automobile, cities were on the cusp of suburban sprawl, which would put much less pressure on building compact apartment buildings downtown. Sprinkle in a little bit of classism around housing types, and you have our North American compromise for the building code. Build with less fireproof materials, but compensate with stricter regulations. So sure, we might've had our suburban sprawl here, but at least we got safer buildings. With this double staircase requirement, we've saved countless of lives, while in the rest of the world, people are still perishing in fires in their single staircase buildings. Take that, Amsterdam. Well, that's not exactly true. As you can see on this chart, the US and Canada don't have the fewest fire deaths per capita, not by a long shot. It turns out there are so many other factors that contribute towards fire safety. In fact, it seems like the real success story of our building codes hasn't been so much about helping people escape fires, but preventing them in the first place. For example, regulating the materials buildings are made out of, requiring fire doors, pressurized staircases, sprinklers, fire alarm systems, and fire extinguishers. Today, almost every aspect of your home has been vetted for fire safety. Even your mattress is required by law to be made out of fire-resistant materials. What are you doing? Nothing. Those requirements have also coincided with a very important cultural change. In most places, smoking indoors is now prohibited. As a result, building fires have decreased about 50% over the past several decades, and they've become much less severe. So this requirement to have two staircases is hardly the most significant improvement we've made to fire safety by a long shot. And when it gets in the way of new housing supply and family-sized apartments, it does make you wonder, do we need this rule at all? Well, personally, I think that doing away with this rule altogether would be too drastic. It exists for a reason, and in my opinion, the problem isn't the rule itself, but just how broadly we've applied it. I'll remind you, every apartment in Canada above two stories has to follow this rule. We're the only country in the world that is this strict about it, and I think we're missing some important nuance. If you live in a high-rise where hundreds of people need to be evacuated in a fire, I get that having two separate stairs would still be really important, but what about a six-story apartment, or even a three-story apartment? In fact, there are a few cities in North America that have made exemptions to this rule. For example, Seattle. In 1977, the city began allowing apartments up to six stories to have just one staircase, provided they comply with other safety regulations. Today, it's one of the few cities in North America where you can see modern single-staircase buildings, and for this video, I wanted to visit one for myself. And it just disappears. Here in Metro Vancouver, Urbanarium is hosting a design competition to explore what buildings could look like if we changed, updated, or eliminated codes like this one. It's called Decoding Density, and it's intended to imagine new possibilities for six-story housing forms by challenging codes and building requirements, as well as encouraging ideas that highlight affordability. To find out more and register for the competition, visit decodingdensity.com. There's $44,000 in cash prizes available, and your entry could be featured in an upcoming About Here video. Now, if all this makes you a bit nervous, I get it. After all, these codes are about our safety. But I do want to mention that these codes do change over time as our technology and our understanding of safety evolves. For example, the BC government recently amended its building code to increase the maximum height of wood buildings from six to 12 stories because of innovations in wood construction like mass timber that can make wood stronger and more fire-resistant. It's important that we continue to discuss and update these rules as our world changes. So, the next time you're at a party or visiting your family or on a date, bring up staircases or fire-protection ratings or dead-end conditions and elevators. I mean, oh, my gosh, there's so much to talk about.