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This obscure rule is one reason San Francisco can’t build more housing
(www.sfchronicle.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
10 points (85.7% liked)
Mildly Interesting
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This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
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Not covered on the site: The fact that San Francisco experiences earthquakes. Unlike all those other cities it sources as being perfectly fine with completely different building standards.
True it didn’t, but Japan got earthquakes like they’re going out of style.
As the other comment mentions, Japan is listed as not having a maximum, making this more or less lose relevance.
On top of that, the stated motivation for the two stairwell rule is fire safety, which is only really adjacent to earthquake safety. Other locations have figured out that two stairwells are very much not necessary to achieve appropriate levels of fire safety, and San Francisco would do very well to learn from them.