Regulators should be doing everything they can to unlock the feasibility of new four- to six-storey housing with elevators and modern safety systems (fire alarms, sprinklers, etc.) to increase the overall quality and safety of our housing stock. spacing.ca/toronto/2026...

Bridging the gap between houses and high-rises - Spacing Toronto

Many of us want more sustainable, safe, affordable and accessible homes. Despite zoning and land use changes to allow multiplexes and small apartment buildings in more places, the reality is that such...

spacing.ca

This was a helpful analysis showing how different the floorplan could be with one stairwell. On this kind of lot, you either get a second stair or a lightwell. Can't have both. x.com/PaulSteidl/s...

Paul Steidl (@PaulSteidl) on X

Compare to this plan. @OpenScopeStudio published a piece in 2024 illustrating exactly why single-stair matters for infill housing in San Francisco. It also happened to include a very similarly sized ...

x.com

230 Anza was approved by the San Francisco Planning Commission yesterday, and I don't think I've ever seen a set of floor plans that would benefit more from a code that allowed single stair sfyimby.com/2026/07/rend...

Thanks! What an absurd layout- single stair reform can’t come soon enough

Attention single-stair/missing middle people: as part of OBC review, the Province has opened a consultation on the Building Code, seeking to “identify ways to reduce unnecessary costs, delays, complexity, and administrative burden”. Runs to August 14. ero.ontario.ca/notice/026-0744

These are single-stair buildings, BTW, with the stairs accessible through an open-air balcony working as fire compartmentalization/smoke filter. (note the abundance of elevators)

Brutalismbot@brutalismbot.com · 2w ago

Buildings inBologna, Italy r/brutalism

Renovation of an 11th Century tower in Nyon, by Bunq Architectes Beautiful work, but those bedrooms are a little snug…

most obvious policy W of all time

Gothamist@gothamist.com · 3w ago

The Upper West and East sides of Manhattan are set to lose about 10% of their street parking: gothamist.visitlink.me/EAcIUW

In the City of Seattle, only about 20% of powerlines are underground. Single-stair apartment buildings up to six stories tall have been legal there for decades. Has there been a single case where someone was harmed due to overhead wires near a modern single stair building in Seattle?

Burying power lines: Is it worth the cost?

It sounds so simple: To keep falling tree limbs from knocking out power, you have to bury the lines. But that's not a cheap solution. "You can have a...

seattletimes.com

Stephen Jacob Smith@stephenjacobsmith.com · last mo.

Interesting article on the costs of burying power lines. We need to figure this out – underground power lines are common in Europe, and should be doable here. Firefighters will have at least semi-legit issues about access for rescues in single-stair buildings. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

@lanefab.com identifies three things needed to make this work: accommodative zoning, single-stair reform, and elevator cost reform. Great article!

Sightline Institute@sightline.org · 4w ago

🚨 Eye candy alert 🚨 How do we add more homes to our existing leafy, quiet, 50'-wide residential lots? @lanefab.com has a gorgeous idea.

Sam Naylor, author of a prior report on single-stair in the Boston area, has a new report on the building code development process generally and opportunities for reform, presented at a Boston Foundation virtual event with me on July 14 at 9:30-10:30 a.m. ET www.tbf.org/events/2026/...

An even more egregious example of a Chicago bldg that screams for single-stair. It’s even arranged the same way (4 units/floor) but with nowhere near the efficiency. A 8.6k sq. ft. floorplate (!!, a quadruple lot plat!) nets out only 16 units in a 5 story bldg. chicagoyimby.com/2026/07/mixe...

Stephen Jacob Smith@stephenjacobsmith.com · 2mo ago

Lowercase-a affordable 2BR/2BA's shrunk significantly because the Chicago Fire Department can't accept even three-story single-stair buildings like the rest of the country has for decades. Rear stairs can't replace single-stair for all lot shapes and zoning. chicago.urbanize.city/post/residen...

Vancouver: Single Stair Code + "Villages" Plan Critics will be critics, but the truth is we've never seen single stair urbanism in action in Canada (or most of North America). It's a new thing.

Vancouver's new single stair building code + "Villages" Zoning Updates = Unlocking small lot apartment buildings* *for the first time since the mid 70s, when the city was down-zoned to protect 'single family character', and apartment buildings were made illegal on 80% of the residential land

Vancouver, WA is proof that US bldg officials are empowered to permit single-stair bldgs right now if they wanted to. Staff posted on the city website that plans compliant with Seattle code are pre-approved. No need to wait for the state code to adopt or city council to vote. They just went for it.

connected single stair with a courtyard damn this is gorgeous american building codes really do make for sh*ttier housing www.archdaily.com/1041560/9-wi...

9 Wilson Ave Apartment / MA+Co + Neometro

Completed in 2024 in Melbourne, Australia. Images by Tom Ross. 9 Wilson Ave is a mixed-use, multi-residential building that completes the transformation of Wilson Ave in Brunswick, Melbourne, from a c...

archdaily.com

A truly ridiculous floor plan, the result of Chicago not allowing single exit stair design and not allowing scissor stairs (interlocking separate enclosures).

Stephen Jacob Smith@stephenjacobsmith.com · 2mo ago

Lowercase-a affordable 2BR/2BA's shrunk significantly because the Chicago Fire Department can't accept even three-story single-stair buildings like the rest of the country has for decades. Rear stairs can't replace single-stair for all lot shapes and zoning. chicago.urbanize.city/post/residen...

Stockholm’s pedestrian fatality rate per 100k is 0.45. The U.S. is over 5x that. Like much of the EU Stockholm uses standards of 9.8’ for city street lanes and allows for 10.8’ in bus and truck corridors. The U.S. sets a 26’ minimum width for streets and common lane widths are 12-14’.

Jason Cox@jasoncoxnc.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Lots of cars in Stockholm. Lots of bicycles. Lots of pedestrians. Seems fine?

Three different kinds of illegal stepping out of our Stockholm apartment.

After the Grenfell fire, England changed its building codes to cap single-stair buildings at just 18 meters (or ~60 ft) high. Their own regulatory cost analysis found that if they capped it at 30m instead, it would achieve 90% of the benefits while cutting the overall societal cost by almost half.

E24-24, my proposal to raise the IBC’s single-stair apartment building height limit from three stories to four, has passed the final membership vote, and will now officially make it into the 2027 IBC 🎉

New page on switchgear (electrical infrastructure for larger buildings) just dropped. it is a great explainer on what the hardware is and what to expect. app.bchydro.com/accounts-bil...

In Canadian Architect, I write out 10 case studies of housing innovation in Canada, from single-stair multiplexes to Indigenous-led city-building and rapid-assembly panelization. www.canadianarchitect.com/housing-in-a...

Housing in Action

Sustainable, affordable, high-quality housing requires experts who can translate policy and regulations into built form—and who can challenge those policies when they present technical barriers to pro...

canadianarchitect.com

The Council just passed legislation to allow single-stair and single-entrance apartment buildings up to six stories in DC. Allowing single-stair buildings: ✅ Reduces housing construction costs ✅ Enables housing on narrow city lots ✅ Facilitates more family-sized units The bill passed unanimously.

"The kinds of multifamily we build most of, where many homes share a common internal corridor, is actually vastly more dangerous than single-stair buildings which are smaller and have fewer residents per corridor or stair." commonwealthbeacon.org/opinion/the-...

The growing case for single-staircase buildings as one answer to our housing crisis

Nearly every other state in New England — Vermont dating back decades, and Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut more recently — has either changed or committed to changing its building code to allow ...

commonwealthbeacon.org

Single-stair gets the New York Times treatment. @holz-bau.bsky.social reminds us why they call the last line the kicker: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/b... (gift link)

In the second issue of EXPO, I look at the history of the condominium in Canada. Why did condos become the primary mode of delivering multi-unit urban housing? Why did we build so many? And what happens now that nobody's buying?

An Architectural History of the Condominium — EXPO the magazine

As pre-construction sales and project launches slow to a trickle, is the end of Canada’s condo era in sight? And what comes next?

expothemagazine.com

'Fully embracing the single-stair model would improve life in Toronto & beyond by enabling the design of buildings w/ abundant natural light, cross-ventilation, & more generous layouts, and by also supporting the formation of stronger, intergenerational social bonds' www.kpmb.com/insight/how-...

Doug Ford said it had to close because the roof was unstable. Massive snow dump, roof just fine. Doug Ford lies.

Save OSC@saveosc.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Sunday, January 25, 2026, 9:05 pm. Built for winter. ❄️ Built for Canada. 🇨🇦

Interesting floor plan that shows what mitigations are possible that are not a second stair or sprinklers (neither of which are common in new apartment buildings in France). The lower floors have a short double-loaded corridor with five units of up to 4BR, which I... divisare.com/projects/548...