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Comment by hibikir | Hacker News Reader

And yet, most residential construction is basically the same, whether it's going to be built in Palo Alto, upstate NY, Kansas, south Florida or Portland. Most of those don't have anything that even resembles strong earthquake risk.

American housing is built the way it is not due to extra interest in safety, but because it's cheap to build under US prices. You can call it better or worse than Europe, but it sure isn't earthquakes.

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>And yet, most residential construction is basically the same, whether it's going to be built in Palo Alto, upstate NY, Kansas, south Florida or Portland

This was the case but it's not really true any more. Building codes have become more stringent and risk specific. This hasn't changed anything around earthquakes though as as building a single story wood building that stands up to an earthquake is easy, building one that withstands a hurricane is harder.

What is the advantage of using stronger building materials? Say brick vs wood frames.

It's not necessarily about strength but brick buildings will survive both fire and water much better than wooden buildings, they don't burn or rot. Brick buildings generally last hundreds of years with minimal maintenance (assuming no earthquakes).

Wood buildings can last hundreds of years but require far more upkeep.

This argument kind of falls apart when you start trying to maintain or improve plumbing, HVAC, and electrical through the house. It's much easier to do that through the wood and drywall of a typical American house.

AFAIK Plumbing tends to run beneath the floors in either construction model. Electrical in brick buildings is a pain as it runs in conduit behind the plaster but this doesn't compromise the viability of your structure and has a fairly long service life.

HVAC also can generally also be run under floors (and outside of the USA forced air systems are pretty unusual so you're only dealing with pipes).

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