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

Why HN readers recommended it

HN commenters share it in housing and single-stair egress threads as an enjoyable, accessible explainer of the two-stair rule.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

About Here

Topic

single-stair apartment egress

Format

explainer

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

3

HN mentions in dataset

8

Recommendation years in dataset

2023–2025

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• A video I found interesting related to this: [VIDEO] Outdated building codes require 2 stairs, making smaller multi-story housing infeasible. So only larger (whole block) projects pencil out, but people don’t like them because they don’t fit in well. I wonder if smaller (the size …

• I caught a YouTube about this recently that I really enjoyed. "Why North America Can't Build Nice Apartments (Because of One Rule)" [VIDEO]

• I liked this youtube video that covers the same topic[1]. The US focusing entirely on this strategy to increase fire safety seems obviously stupid to me. As people say in other comments here - Europe and other countries require better fire suppression measures and materials …