The Boston triple decker should be the standard home of North America and nobody can tell me otherwise.
They do not appeal to me, as I’m not fond of having to scale several flights of stairs, and the individual floors seem quite small, smaller than my first studio apartment.
My first town house was essentially three stories. The garage level, main living level, and a loft. But the main living space was the majority of the square footage so there was little routine need to scale the stairs.
Also the main living/dining/kitchen area shared with the loft offering a nice, high ceiling, and a roomy experience.
While I can certainly appreciate the benefits of the density these provide, the idea of living in several 400-500 sq ft boxes, especially connected with stairs, just doesn’t appeal to me, particularly as I age.
In Spain and France you’ll find single staircase, 4 story buildings that have one meter-by-meter sized elevator. Often even as retrofits in older buildings! In NY you’ll find these too, but they’re only in pre-war (1930s and older) buildings. It would make many apartments much more accessible and desirable to live in if we could drive down the cost of elevator installations for smaller buildings.
“The width of the elevator car is a minimum of 80 inches (2030 mm). The depth of the elevator car measured from the back wall to the elevator door is a minimum of 54 inches (1370 mm). The depth of the elevator car measured from the back wall to the control panel is a minimum of 51 inches (1291 mm).”
My point is exactly that the ADA, in this case, lets the perfect (fully accessible elevator) result in worse outcomes (brand new apartments in 3-5 story buildings require walking up stairs). This is especially harmful in cities where many homes are on small, 12-20 ft wide lots.
As an example I know people who had to move out of their home when they tore their ACL, whereas with a small elevator they would not need to. To be clear I think we need many many more ADA-accessible apartments, but wherever you are allowed to not have an elevator at all, you should also be allowed to have a small 1-2 person elevator in addition to the stairs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
There are also double triple-deckers (six units)- the stairs are shared by two triple-deckers sharing a common wall. Most of these are side by side, but in Worcester, there are also front / back ones like this (134 Elm St.):
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.2661816,-71.8159232,3a,75y,1...
or with turrets:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.2662587,-71.8167573,3a,75y,2...
The stairs are definitely shared in the side-by-side ones, not sure how it works in these.
So I used to rent in a 10-unit five story brick and wood building with front and back stairs, so I question a bit that the two stair requirement is such a big deal. This building had a central open area, and an old (broken) cage style elevator. Something like this:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Taboo+Beauty+Salon/@42.264...
Cheap enough for a middle income family to build or purchase themselves, enough apartments for grandparents, parents and children just getting their start in the world. They're great!