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Comment by Grakel | Hacker News Reader

A staircase takes up about the plan size of one bedroom. If that's too much, you're probably trying to cram too many people into a building.

There's efficiency, and then there's, "more people live in this city than can all fit on the sidewalks." Maybe just don't.

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I'm surprised that anyone could have that response after reading the article. It is very clearly talking about space wasted primarily in hallways and in the restrictions that requiring two stairways puts on floorplans.

Yep, that's what I'm talking about. Those things are important negative space. What would you get, one more apartment per floor? Let's not crawl over each other like ants.

You could get larger units or cheaper units since everyone is paying for that floor space which is potentially not required.

The problem is the 2nd staircase creates the need for a hallway between the staircases. Look at the floor plans in the article.

In one you've got units clustered around a staircase landing.

In the other you've got a long hallway and 2 staircases with units along the hallway.

Yes and when the fire alarm goes off every family crushes into that tiny space and tries to get down one staircase. Not to mention countless other bad situations. There's qualitative reasons not to maximize this. Build up one more floor, problem solved.

Remember the limit is only 2 storeys for a single stairwell. How many storeys can you have with 2? 6 storeys? 12?

So you can somehow get a zillion floors of people down 2 stairwells, but only one floor of people down one?

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